Disclaimer: I do not own Venom

A/N: So, guys, sorry for the long wait, though I must admit this is the shortest a story of mine has been put on hold. I tried several times to get this as right as possible, and even now, I'm not entirely certain. However, I did try my best and - well - I hope you enjoy it.

Something I just want to point out is that in this story, symbiosis is not easily achieved. It's usually just human + symbiote = BOOM! INSTANT FRIENDSHIP/RELATIONSHIP AND AWESOME POWERS. It isn't. Symbiosis, in my opinion, is a hard process both for human and symbiote, and it takes time before symbiosis is truly achieved. In this chapter, keep in mind that Evelyn is not in control of her actions (except for the last part, partially). She hasn't developed some kind of bond with the symbiote yet, nor it with her. More about that will come in the later chapters, I promise. For now, just bear with me and I will elaborate on it in the later chapters.

On another hand, off the subject, I've been reading some very good Venom fanfictions from 'Archive of our Own (AO3)' as of recently, and I just want to mention two of them because they are so friggin' amazing and I love them!

One is named "How I met my brother and regretted everything" and revolve around Sleeper and Carnage as they struggle to achieve a mutual goal. It's a mixture of dark humor and action, and I highly recommend it. If you don't know who Sleeper is, they are Venom's seventh offspring who appears in the recent comics.
Another story is named "Hate Inoculum", and it takes place in an alternative universe where the symbiotes are sentient spacesuits, and they have the objective to terminate galactic threats with their hosts.
Both stories are written by user Prince_Of_Trash, and again, I highly recommend them.

Additional art will be posted on my DeviantArt account: X-KuroShiro-X

Read, write and enjoy!

UPDATED: 06.11.19

Parasitic – 26: Payback

Someone kicked the door down from the other side and three men emerged through the frame, armed and not looking like they had benevolent intent in mind. Had his life not potentially been in danger, Eddie would have been more worried about scraping together some coins to pay for the damage rather than to get the hell out of there as any ordinary person would. Being late on the rent for the past couple of months had left a lingering effect on him he wasn't sure could be removed by burglars breaking into his house and possibly breaking everything in sight in search of valuable items.

Upon closer inspection from beneath the window frame outside, however, Eddie began to doubt that these guys were your ordinary neighborhood burglars and thieves.

For starters, they were carrying firearms that did not seem like the average Glock 17. you would expect a common burglar to be in the possession of. They weren't wearing any masks either, be it balaclavas or nylon, which indicated that these guys were pretty much expecting to get a free ticket out of jail once the cops showed up… Though the cops were doubtfully on their way anyhow unless the landlord noticed any commotion, which he seldom did. There could be a full-blown war in the entire complex and he wouldn't as much as bat an eye. He was a drunkard anyway who always carried a bottle of Bacardi with him wherever he went, so there wasn't much to hope for in that department.

As the armed people started scurrying through the rooms, going everywhere from beneath his bed into his closet in search of something, or someone, Eddie was about to get a better look when something forced him to get up and quickly pushed into the brick wall next to the window frame, causing an inaudible 'ugh' to escape his lips as he felt a portion of air abandon his lungs on impact. As he opened his mouth to speak up against his assailant, he promptly shut it again upon seeing March glaring at him with a finger over her lips, commanding silence.

Surprisingly, he cooperated, though it felt more like his lips were involuntarily glued together into a thin line than it being a deliberate move, so opposing her didn't seem like much of an option.

March lowered her finger and provided a quick look through the side of the window, her irises started darting from left to right as she evaluated the situation without exposing herself to them. She continued to look around until suddenly, her gaze froze, and Eddie noticed how terrified they made the doctor appear to be despite her ordinarily callous characteristics.

He cautiously tipped over to get a view of what it was she had her eyes set on, and found himself looking at one of the guys he swore seemed familiar somehow, like a distant memory that had been buried in the back of his subconsciousness.

The lack of hair on the man's head served as a contributing factor behind the sense of recognition Eddie experienced. He could swear on his life that he had seen him someplace before, but it wasn't until he laid his eyes on the Life Foundation insignia at the back of the man's uniform that all the pieces of the puzzle came together.

He knew who these people were; more accurately, he knew who they worked for. That realization alone tempted to make him march up to them and provide solid kicks to each of their shiny asses, but he knew that he would most likely end up as good as dead if he did it, or shot for that matter.

A predatory growl resonated through his ears, one that seemingly went through his entire being and prompted his limbs to shudder.

"Treece," the voice snarled, vehement resentment practically reeking of its tone.

Eddie wasn't about to question why it was so pissed off at the guard and just continued to observe him. The guard moved calculatingly through the apartment, hands on his back and an unreadable expression planted on his face as he inspected what the rest of them did. He didn't seem to be in any state of distress or impatience; rather, it was like he was taking his morning stroll through the park.

The longer Eddie stared at the bald guard, he found that the stronger this intense feeling of hate began to manifest inside of his chest, expanding like a tumor throughout his body to the point where all other emotions were low in quantity. His fingers continuously clenched and unclenched themselves, causing his nails to dig into his palm for each time the pattern repeated itself. Fuck, he didn't know why he was angry at someone he didn't even know. Maybe it was because this piece of shit was working for Drake, but that alone couldn't stir such inexplicable rage on its own. Not entirely.

For some reason, Eddie did not believe that the rage inside of him was genuinely his own. Perhaps a side-effect from being infected with the parasite –

"QUIT CALLING ME A PARASITE!"

Jesus, would this bitch ever shut up?

"YOU SHUT UP!"

Eddie tried. He tried his damndest not to let his anger get the better of him. Hell, he tried so hard that his nails were starting to claw up the insides of his palms, but it still wasn't enough. It was a herculean effort on his part not to give in to the satisfaction of jumping off the balcony to keep himself from listening to any more bullshit that voice had to spew. But what he did as a means to keep himself from actually jumping did little to make the situation any better; if anything, it worsened it.

He groaned, "Will you just shut the fu –"

"Treece, there's someone on the balcony!"

Hearing this, Eddie contemplated whether jumping from the balcony now would be the solution to their problems. Of course, he couldn't have just shut the fuck up himself, and now they were going to pay the price.

He turned to March in search of plausible answers that could benefit them or provide them with a way to escape from there unscathed, the faintest sense of hope lighting up in his chest.

The glare he received from her in return was strong enough to melt iron bars.

"You really are an idiot," the voice sighed.

For once, Eddie agreed with it.

Before he knew it, someone grasped at the back of his hoodie and dragged him through the window frame back into his apartment. He barely had any time to process what was happening before the view of the exterior stairs disappeared and got replaced with the ceiling inside his apartment. His back landed on the floor with a thud, and all air was knocked out of his lungs from the impact.

By the time he opened his eyes and regained focus, he had said firearms aimed at him from all angles. All he could think to say at that moment was just one thing, one simple word:

"Fuck,"

Words could not describe the unbearable sense of fear that rushed through Dan as he stared down at Eddie's reports from the MRI. Had he not already redone the diagnostics twice in a row beforehand, then he would never have believed that someone with Eddie's internal damages could still be standing properly without visible abnormalities in his behavior.

He considered asking Frank for a second opinion in case he had missed something himself, or to ask him whether or not something was wrong with the MRI. The thing was already old by several years, so it wouldn't surprise him if it was slightly malfunctioning due to age. While it was an idea he eventually discarded due to a lack of evidence to support his hypothesis, the notion still lingered with him as he inspected the reports once again.

Whatever kind of … Parasite this was, Dan knew he needed to get Eddie admitted as soon as possible for further testing. One thing was whether or not this parasite was affecting its host alone. Another thing was if it could spread to other organisms; other people. If he had to make a guess, Dan would assume that it was Toxoplasmosis, judging from all the effects it had on his internal organs. Malaria was another option he considered, but he sincerely doubted it. Considering how malaria was most commonly received in especially warm climates like southern continents (someplace Dan felt reluctantly discouraged to believe was a place Eddie had recently been), he doubted the latter.

Since he didn't have Eddie's personal phone number, he knew he had to rely on Annie for this case. He pulled out his cellphone and was about to press Anne's number when suddenly another contact popped up on the screen, and he paused.

Dr. Evelyn March

Dan was caught between crossroads, torn between two choices and being unable to make the right call. What Frank had told him stuck with him; "If she wants to die, then let her die". Ironic how that piece of advice would escape the lips of a physician whose days primarily consisted of saving lives. But Dan knew that, in a sense, Frank was correct. He wasn't Evelyn's guardian or anything, nor did he have any reason to keep an eye out for her. She was an adult capable of making her own decisions, regardless of how much her morals clashed with his own.

Even though he had already made a promise.

He looked down at the number one last time, his thumb hovered over the call button for a minute or so before he ultimately discarded the idea and pressed Annie's number instead, oblivious towards the fact that that evening, in particular, would be soaked with crimson fluids as far as the streets in San Francisco stretched.

Scrambling back on his rear and further away from the guard that had pulled him through the window, Eddie felt his Adam's apple go both up and down as he stared at the guns being aimed at him. The closer he inspected them, however, he realized that they weren't ordinary guns at all, not even Glocks. They were tasers, which indicated that their intent wasn't to kill him. Rather, they were determined to render him unconscious for some godforsaken purpose.

They were four men there in total, including Treece, whose face stood out from the rest by the way he stared so sharply at Eddie, like a science professor about to dissect a frog with morbid fascination.

If Eddie were to take them all on one-by-one, he assumed that he would stand quite fair in terms of strength against them, without the tasers involved at least. However, in a situation such as this one, he was not about to put that hypothesis to the test.

Treece glanced to the side at the bloodstains on his floor and his table, trailing a finger over some of them. "Had an accident, Eddie?" he asked.

"N-No,"

"Then who has?"

He didn't answer.

Treece turned to the guard who had dragged Eddie inside. "Were there anyone else with him?"

The guard shook his head. "Not that I could see, sir,"

Treece shrugged. "Doesn't matter,"

Where the hell was March?

He was roughly dragged up to his feet by one of the guards.

"Eddie," Treece addressed him. "You did well in getting into the LF. I'd say I'm impressed, but right now, I'm gonna need Mr. Drake's property back."

Each of the tasers instantly lit up, aiming red targets at his chest.

Like a deer caught in head-lights, Eddie froze up and instantly raised his arms above his head.

"What are you doing?" the voice asked as though he was questioning something that was absolutely ridiculous, even though Eddie's actions were perfectly reasonable within the circumstances.

"I'm – I'm putting my hands up," Eddie responded, not seeing how what he was doing didn't make any sense.

His arms violently swung down again, earning him a few puzzled looks from each of the guards.

"You are making us look back."

His arms lifted themselves up unsteadily.

"No. I. am. Not."

Arms down.

"Yes, you are."

Arms up.

"No, I'm not."

Down again.

"Yes, you are."

Up once more.

"No, I'm not."

"Why would you do that?"

"Because it's a very sensible thing to do?" At that point, he did not have much energy left to spend on what he could only assume was a one-sided conversation himself or with an auditory hallucination produced by a para – some kind of brain tumor.

"Eddie," Treece called him, but Eddie was too preoccupied with this internal argument to bother answering.

"I will take care of this myself,"

"W-What?" What the hell was that supposed to mean?

"Eddie, where is the bug?" Treece asked, but being met with no comprehensible answer, he turned to his subordinates with one clear order in mind.

"Take him do –"

Treece's command was cut short as thousands of shards of glass and brick-debris flew into the room from the window frames like bullets, sending the entire place into a state of disarray. Furniture Eddie could care less about – a couple of chairs, some pots with decomposing plants in them, and things that he could not afford to concern himself with any more than he did the rest – slammed into the wall and rest of the guards struggled to maintain their composure as various objects threatened to puncture their skin on impact.

A monstrous figure Eddie deemed too unbearably familiar to forget emerged at inhuman speed through the open gap that had once been his walls, appearing more like a blur or a trick of the eye than a real creature due to its vast speed. He barely managed to process the view of what was happening before the figure threw itself right at Treece and sent the rest of the guards yelling incoherent orders as they tried to make out what to do.

The bald man fell back against the kitchen counter, his arms barely supporting him from behind as the dark figure loomed over him like a starving predator, hunched over the top of the counter with legs on each side Treece's head and his face just inches away from its mouthless head. Eddie could see the fear become present in his eyes, even from the distance between them, and he doubted that he himself would have looked any different had it been him instead of Treece. In fact, Eddie had just experienced something vastly similar just moments earlier, so he had a pretty good guess about how it felt.

As the guards had their attention momentarily turned away from Eddie, a black substance abruptly extracted itself from his right hand. A warm feeling akin to holding his arm beneath bathwater accompanied the sensation, and it stretched out to an inhuman length like a vine. It knocked the guard closest to him out the window and broke it in the process, sending shards of glass descending down to the pavement along with the body. Eddie barely had any time to acknowledge the black goo that retracted itself back into his right hand before his left hand mimicked the same movements and extracted the same vine-like material.

The black sludge grabbed the other guard by the throat threw him up to the ceiling, seemingly knocking him out cold as he landed harshly on the floor.

The remaining guard's attention was aimed at Treece, who was trying desperately to get his assailant off him.

The guard reached for his taser and aimed it at the monster, but before he could shoot, Eddie's watched as his own arm extended down to reach for one of the dumbells on the floor. It threw it at the guard before he could act, knocking the poor guy into the refrigerator and sending him into a state of unconsciousness similar to that of his co-workers.

This was … Eddie had no words to describe it. While he deemed his vocabulary somewhat under-expanded for his occupation and age, he didn't even know of any words beforehand that could describe what the hell this was, or how he was feeling. His nerves were disoriented, his mind went rapid, and whatever he knew to be true before suddenly lost its dependability in the face of these changes of events. He thought he had seen all there was to see about the world, but as he watched the black substance extract itself from both his palms and merge together to form a makeshift rope, he began to second-guess that statement.

"Wha – What is that?" he asked as his body was promptly forced to turn around and tangle the black material around the head of the guard he had thrown to the ceiling, who had suddenly revived himself.

"Not 'what', but 'who',"

His arms then twisted the sludge around the guard's neck, forced him around, and threw him over his shoulder to the floor, causing the man to crash with a loud thud. This time, he was definitely out, but Eddie checked just to make sure.

Yup, he was out alright.

On the other side of the room, the figure stared menacingly down at Treece, and even though it did not possess any distinctive facial features to shape distinguishable expressions. The tendrils protruding from its back were planted like roots on each side of the man's face and on the floorboards behind them, serving as a means to intimidate the man. Judging by the way his eyes continuously darted to the side in search of plausible escape-methods, it was efficient to a certain degree.

Treece vastly attempted to reach for the gun he kept attached to his belt, but before he could lift his arm to grab it, the figure quickly snatched his wrist and, with little effort, snapped it with the flick of its thumb. It bent into an unnatural angle, and all color left Treece's face at a pace faster than light.

A deafening shriek echoed through the apartment's walls from the guard's mouth. Eddie had to cover his ears to keep the sounds out. For whatever reason, listening to it brought him more pain and discomfort than he thought was possible.

The figure's seemingly indifferent reaction towards the man's display of agony was a disturbing view from the ex-journalist's perspective. He thought that March, whom he assumed was still someplace inside that hideous creature, would object against such inhumane acts if she had even a smidgen of control over that thing.

The figure promptly dropped the misshapen wrist and leaned closer into Treece's pain-writhing countenance, lifting one of its clawed fingers to point it dangerously close to the man's right eye. Its sharp feature threatened to scrape the surface of his iris, but instead of piercing through the eyeball like anticipated, the hand turned around to display its palm and opened it up, revealing a tiny, metallic object that Eddie could not make out entirely from where he was standing. However, what he did make out was that upon inspecting the small object, Treece's eyes went wide with traumatized disbelief and his pupils shrunk as it once more acknowledged the figure hovered over him.

Before the figure could proceed to do anything else, two more guards abruptly emerged from the open door and one of them instantly aimed its taser at it, though there was evident fear in their eyes as they acknowledged the inhuman creature. The barbed darts successfully managed to hit the creature's back and electric volts surged through them upon contact.

However, they earned no reaction from the figure, which seemed to shock both of the guards.

Instead, the creature effortlessly shook the barbed darts off its back, letting them slide to the floor, and slowly turned around to address the two new figures that had threatened its presence. A pair of new tendrils sprouted from its back and extended towards the guards, striking them both, sending one of the guards out the already-broken window with a shriek and the other one right at Eddie himself.

Eddie let out a yelp as the guard came his way, and he quickly fell to his knees in time for the flying body to pass him. A loud crash was heard and he dared not turn around and address the damage that fall might have caused.

Needless to say, if he was economically unstable before, then this just added more salt to the open wound that was his wallet.

"Outstanding," the voice praised as he got back up to his feet. "Now, let's bite all their heads off and pile them up in the corner,"

Say what now?

"Why would we do that?" Eddie asked, still trembling with shock and confusion.

"Pile of bodies; pile of heads,"

He gulped. "I don't … think we have time for that right now,"

"No? Well, then get Lasher and let's go. As much as I'd like to see Treece's entrails cover the walls, I doubt we have time to watch if we don't even have time to eat."

Lasher?

Eddie spared only a brief look at all the destruction and number of unconscious people in his apartment (or outside his windows for that matter) before he quickly made his way over the floors (carefully avoiding stumbling over anyone that might have laid in his way), successfully reaching the monster just as it raised its hand to strike Treece while its other hand was keeping a firm hold around his throat.

"Whoa, whoa, wait!" Eddie intervened and hurriedly reached for the figure's raised arm, keeping it from striking down at the guard with as much strength as he could muster. It felt cold to touch it.

"March!" he shouted. "We need to get the hell out of here!"

The figure (which he decided to name "Not-March") momentarily shifted its attention from Treece and to Eddie, and he swore he could feel the pits of his stomach descend to the bottom of his abdomen upon seeing how menacingly it glowered at him. While he had already seen those eyes closed up on him about less than twenty minutes ago, it was not an experience Eddie was enthusiastic about reviving.

"Eh … uh … Ehm … he tells you that we need to go," Eddie said, gesturing to his head.

"Not-March" leaned closer to him with a scrutinizing gaze before it promptly turned its attention back to Treece who, at this point, was panting heavily to the point where his cheeks puffed out between each inhale and exhale, evidently still in pain from having his wrist broken. "Not-March" then proceeded to lift him with the hand still clutched around his throat, and with a speed that made everything seem like a blur, threw Treece down against the counter, causing the back of his head to collide with the marble surface with one loud BANG! His eyes shut and a slurred drawl left his lips as a piece of the marble counter cracked beneath his head and fell to the floor.

At this point, Eddie was beyond worrying about the bill.

"Not-March" then subsequently dropped the guard to the floor like an expired product about to be thrown out the trash (which probably wasn't too far from the truth), and it jumped down to the floor. It shifted around to face Eddie, and for a second, he expected it to attack him as it had earlier.

It didn't.

Instead, it was simply standing there; like a soldier anticipating an order from its superior, even though its height stood quite a few inches over Eddie's stature.

He gulped again, focusing on anything but its eyes as he spoke. "We should probably get out of here," he said, trying his best to maintain his calm in spite of the circumstances. It wasn't easy, but he managed. Whether the actual March could hear him beneath all those layers of bluish goo was a question he wasn't sure could be answered verbally, considering the "Not-March's" lack of a mouth.

The longer he stared at it, the more Eddie found himself equally mesmerized as he was horrified. Whatever it was, he just begged whatever God existed that it wouldn't provide him with a concussion similar to the one it had just provided Treece with.

Still, it didn't.

Eddie was just about to question its lack of movements when "Not-March" abruptly grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him back, causing him to nearly crash into the broken window with his head hitting the edge of the frame. So much for a concussion.

It wasn't until he opened his eyes and noticed bullets flying through the air past him that he realized that being pushed served a purpose that was to his benefit. Shortly afterward, another guard entered the apartment with a gun in his hands, evidently determined to finish the job the rest of them failed to. He didn't get very far, however, before "Not-March" grabbed him by the face and proceeded to slam him down on the floor, leaving behind a significant crack in the boards.

The guard wasn't moving, and for a second, Eddie doubted he was still alive. A cracked cranium was not something he suspected was easily mendable. However, upon noticing the faintest twitch in the guard's body beneath "Not-March's" hold, Eddie could only assume that he was alive, though it was in a state less preferable than death. The number of broken bones in his body wasn't something he wished to discuss.

Just as "Not-March" was about to slam the guard down once again, whether it was to be certain that he posed as no threat or to simply decimate him, Eddie got up to his feet and ran up to it. "Wait! Just wait for one goddamn moment here!"

Surprisingly, before he had even caught up to it, "Not-March" turned its head to look at him and haphazardly dropped the guard to the floor like a dog being told to drop the stick. Upon seeing its eyes stare at him so intently, Eddie's body went rigid once again and he found himself struggling to make out anything from the situation. On one hand, it had just saved him from being shot. On another hand, it had just barely massacred an entire room of people with …

He looked down at his own hands, not having realized that he too seemed to have something similar stuck to him just as March did. Whatever it was – this … malady of theirs – they needed to get out of there before it could harm anyone else, or themselves for that matter. He wanted to demand answers, demand some kind of response from March – wherever the hell she was inside that thing – but if they didn't get the fuck out of there, then they wouldn't have the ability to ask anything of anyone.

"Look," he said and held up his hands, signalizing to "Not-March" that getting into a violent confrontation was the least of his intentions. "Could I – Could I please get March back? I really, really need to talk to her, and you don't exactly look like you – eh – q-qualify for verbal communication,"

Eddie wanted to smack himself with a book or something on repeat. Even a belt would suffice, but he had neither parts at his disposal. Talking like that, he must have looked like he wanted to get slammed into the floor too. He briefly cast a look towards the open (correction: kicked down) door and he contemplated whether running was still an option, but before he could make a decision, "Not-March" continued to stare unpredictably at him for another moment or two before it straightened its back to its full stature and slowly melted away into a person Eddie didn't realize he had slightly missed until he saw her.

The turquoise-colored layers gradually merged into her clothes, disappearing beneath dark hair and pale skin and leaving behind a ghost of the woman Eddie deemed his only ally at this point. While he was not absolutely certain that she was by any means reliable, he couldn't afford to be picky anymore if it meant that his life was on the line.

Upon opening her eyes again, March let out a gasp that made it look like she had been denied access to air for a good portion of the time she spent beneath that … thing. Eddie could easily tell by the beads of sweat that were forming on her forehead and the hand clasped over her chest that it may not have been too far from the truth, but they wouldn't have time to discuss their shared trauma unless they were deliberately waiting for more people to show up. Much to his surprise, however, she looked much more alive now than earlier, and her pale complexion had regained some of its colors, though the shades beneath her eyes remained ever as prominent. An effect of eating those tater tots, he guessed.

As if suddenly realizing where she was, March turned her head to the room, observing all of the calamity that had taken place minutes earlier. She was speechless; you could have dropped a spoon in the room and the sound it would produce would have been the equivalent of dropping a vase and listening to it shatter through the chaotic space.

"This … This is …?" Her voice was hoarse, as though she had spent a good portion of her life screaming her lungs out. Her eyes trailed over the bodies scattered on the floor to the broken wall from which "Not-March" had emerged through. For each time she discovered something new within her range of vision, Eddie could tell that she grew more and more … fearful. Her movements were stiff and rigid, and she took a couple of steps back from the mess. A part of him wanted to somehow console her, tell her that this wasn't her fault, but that would be considered lying.

He despised lying.

She continued to behave that way until she noticed Treece on the floor, and her entire demeanor changed.

The subtle traits of fearfulness on her face were replaced with … sharp bitterness, like looking at someone you bore a vehement grudge towards. Her eyes sharpened and her mouth tightened to shape a subtle frown, one that was strong enough to even send Eddie bolting the other way had it not been for the fact that it wasn't aimed at him this time.

At first, he expected her to ask him something akin to "Who is he?" or "What happened here?", but instead, Eddie heard something he at first believed was just a trick produced by his brain.

"Is he alive?" she asked, voice utterly monotone as her posture regained its composure. Eddie could easily tell that her question was neither of concern or curiosity. It was out of spite like she was asking why he was alive.

He didn't know how to answer and just shook his head. "I don't know, but I think so,"

March looked down at the unconscious guard again like she was contemplating something rather questionable. Then, without warning, she walked up to Treece's unconscious form until she towered over him, lifted a foot just above his head, and promptly stomped it down on top of his face. A considerably loud snap! was heard upon impact with Treece's face and her shoe, which Eddie cowered to upon hearing.

When she retracted her foot again, there was nothing but blood covering the lower-bottom of Treece's face. There was a significant bulge on the bridge of his nose, which was now slightly bent to the left, with blood pouring out of his nostrils like rivers down his face. He had to admit, however, that it was a rather gratifying view.

Eddie parted his lips to utter a comment, but March instantly snapped her attention back to him, as if daring him to speak of it.

He promptly shut his mouth and kept quiet.

"Then," he asked sheepishly, pointing his thumb back at the open door without looking away. "Should we get going or…?"

Treece could scarcely feel anything in his body, but there was an unmistakably sore spot in his face and in his wrist that was just begging him to relieve them of their misery. He opened his eyes just in time to see the disoriented image of white fabric disappear like a ghost out the door, though it took him a few moments for his senses to regain their dependability entirely, and by then, the white figure was gone.

The moment he regained his senses, however, he instantly wanted them to go numb again. Not only did the center of his face feel like it was on fire, but his entire being felt like it had just ventured through a near-demolished house with all the debris having descended upon him.

Getting back up on his feet was near-impossible due to the injuries his body undoubtedly suffered from, but Treece swallowed his pain and did it anyway. Several of his limbs made several popping-sounds as they were forced into action, but years of military training and fighting had left him with a sense of immunity towards agony. It was something he was forced to remind himself every time he was exposed to something he considered to be his worst experience thus far.

There was always something worse.

As he got to his feet, Treece slid a hand over his face and came to discover the red fluids that covered his leather glove, not even paying his wrist any mind at all. The blood was one thing, but the sore spot at the center of his face that refused to subdue itself meant that his nose was most likely broken. Hell, it had happened countless times before, so he was no stranger towards snapping it back into place.

That didn't mean he enjoyed it.

With his index finger and thumb placed on each side of the bridge of his nose, Treece forced it back into place with a brief and easy snap. The sensation was enough to make his eyes water.

Fuck!

But now that that ordeal had been dealt with, Treece turned around to observe the rest of his group while cradling his injured hand, noticing how the majority of his guards were stirring up on the floor, evidently shaken but still alive and able to fire a gun if he ordered them to. They were still reusable; tools designed to follow his command regardless of its content.

"Treece. Treece!" His earpiece started to go off, which he was forced to answer with the hand that was barely functional.

It was Drake. "Treece, the last symbiote has escaped!"

"What?" he asked, uncertain about what he had heard was true.

"SYM-A02 got out of its containment and took a host. I want you to find it and bring it back to me. Both of them. Do you understand? We believe that they are both still in the city. Contain them!"

Did it get out? It took a host? ... Skirth was already dead, it couldn't have been her...

As Treece began to pace, he felt something hard beneath his boot, and when he picked it up to see what it was, all sense of self abandoned him as he recognized what it was.

A bullet; more specifically, one of his bullets. One he had just used recently on one person.

It had been shown to him by that ... thing.

Treece bit the inside of his cheek to the point where he drew blood and clenched his first with the bullet still in his grip, breaking it to pieces. He already knew who it was. Hell, he had seen it right in front of him, having nearly lost his life against it.

Goddamn it!

Without even looking, he raised his other wrist and promptly forced it back into its proper position. He could not even feel the pain resonate through his body as he did so. He had other things to concern himself with

This was bad.

Very bad.

If Drake got to find out what had happened, he was dead.

He was very much dead.

Unless ... Unless he could kill both of the freaks and get the bugs out of them before he found out.

"Treece," Drake called. "Do you understand?"

"Crystal, sir," Treece answered. "Crystal clear,"