Disclaimer: I do not own Venom

A/N: So, I've just read the news about the sequel to Venom. For one thing, it will be directed by Andy Serkis; a brilliant director whom I love.

Second, this is that the villain Shriek is going to appear in the movie alongside Carnage, and needless to say, I'm ECSTATIC.

For those of you who do not know, Frances Barrison aka Shriek serves in the comics as both one of Carnage's most trusted allies (during the few times he actually has any) and love interest. She's a mutant with both the ability to manipulate sound - quite fitting, considering that it's one of the symbiotes most fatal weaknesses - and draw out people's darkest desires, such as making parents want to kill their children for the slightest misbehavior, or making you want to harm your professor for marking your essay with a B instead of an A, etc. Perfect, right?

Even before her character was announced for the movie, I had already planned to incorporate her into the story. She, alongside many other familiar characters, will appear later on in the story. I'm looking forward to it.

Sorry for any grammar mistakes or spelling mistakes. I'm quite tired and it's late. Some things I've written might not even make sense XD.

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

As always, read, review and enjoy!

(Updated 06.11.19

Chapter 27: Only Human

Eddie didn't say anything as they stepped out of the building. Rather, he couldn't say anything to say – couldn't find it within himself to pronounce the words that were gathering up inside him like liquid filling in a mason jar. Questioning his sanity aloud was not something he was aversed to – it tended to become a coping mechanism on occasion – but to verbally address the issue in front of someone who was notorious for condescending him was not a level even he would stoop to.

Speaking of which, March had not said a single word herself since their brief exchange prior to Treece's interruption and the subsequent damage done to Eddie's apartment. He knew she was a silent person in general, but this was another matter entirely. Perhaps she had damaged her vocal cords in the midst of the chaos, or her own nature was simply keeping her from engaging in a conversation like an ordinary human being? For some reason, the latter seemed the most reasonable.

He spared her a sideways glance, easily noticing how she appeared to be on the verge of dropping to the ground where she walked. Her steps had been slow, almost deliberately so, and he didn't doubt that it would be long before those green eyes of hers shut, especially when considering how they were continuously dropping down at frequent.

Her hair was practically falling out of the thin tie that was keeping it all together, her eyes were casting shadows that almost reached the ground, and she looked deathly pale to the point where she could have been mistaken for a walking corpse. Even Michael Jackson could've envied that. Eddie had seen dead people before – not a pleasant sight – and she did not look too different from them if he was to state his personal opinion about it.

She had practically been dying minutes earlier because of a ….

Because of what, exactly?

A bug? A virus? An illness?

"We're not bugs,"

Eddie suddenly came to a halt in his steps, wariness washing over him like a tidal wave as realization struck him straight in the face. He could feel his heart grow tight in his chest like a sudden pull from within had shook it. He looked down at his hands – his perfectly normal hands – both of which had been black as coal and clawed back in his apartment, having acted on their own accord.

"On MY accord,"

"SHUT UP!" Eddie yelled, gripping around his head in a vast attempt to shut out any sound. "SHUT THE HELL UP!"

"Mr. Brock," he heard March address him, and he looked up to see her standing there in front of him, still and void of any sort of sympathy for his condition. A porcelain-like look on her that irked him more than it consoled him, even if that wasn't her intent.

Without even thinking, he lurched forward and grabbed the woman by the edges of her lab coat and held her up, her feet hanging just barely above the ground, though he did nothing to keep him from continuing. Rather than looking at him with a terrified look in her eyes, Eddie found naught but those same lifeless eyes that had been within him for the last hour or so.

The eyes of a corpse.

Something that couldn't feel anything; no life; no remorse; no guilt whatsoever. Was there any doubt that she was human at all? From his perspective, there was a massive load of it, and he had plenty of evidence to back up that hypothesis.

"I'm – I'm sick," he said hoarsely, gripping tighter around the sections of her coat until he nearly punctured holes in them. "I'm sick too… like you … This isn't real, right? None of it is. It's just in my head."

"Mr. Brock," March spoke without increasing the volume of her voice, even though she was being literally held above ground by him. "This is not the time to doubt your visual capabilities. None of this is produced by a lack of mental stability, I can assure you."

Eddie shook his head. "Stop fucking with me," he pleaded, shaking her just slightly to ease himself of the frustration that was gathering up inside of him. He didn't care that he was threatening the well-being of a woman. No, he didn't care at all. He was scared – scared beyond what he could describe. He was terrified. His abdomen felt hollow like a cavern but twice as heavy as anything that might have occupied it. There was a gaping void in the darkness of it, filling him with dread. Something that wasn't quite as non-existent as he would have preferred it.

Beads of sweat descended from his forehead and stained his clothes, he felt cold to the core, and there was no way for him to comprehend any of it in a way that would be sensible. The only one he could rely on in that moment of disbelief was a woman – a murderer who had contributed to the deaths of countless, and who had just threatened his life as well.

"I'm sick! I'm infected!" He yelled this as he stared at her, his tone just barely restrained enough to keep him from screaming out his message like he was dying. "You're – You're a doctor, you need to fix this! Fix me!"

"I cannot fix it," she responded as she gripped a hand around his wrist, attempting to pry him off though it was to no use. "This is … beyond my knowledge."

It was ironic. "You did this to me,"

"I … did nothing to you,"

She was hesitating to answer; a trait Eddie never expected to hear from her. A woman, so immune to the sentiments of humanity, was visibly struggling to answer what Eddie could only deem was a simple question on her part. He noticed how she repeatedly felt tempted to avert her gaze from him, as though looking would bring her immense discomfort. In a sense, as if he had been granted the power of the Evil Eye.

Schadenfreude. If it wasn't for the fact that Eddie was too preoccupied with freaking out over what to do, he would have undoubtedly mocked the circumstances and how uncharacteristically the doctor was reacting to them.

"Well, then your buddy Drake is to blame for this, isn't he?" he asked, voice drooling with sarcasm to the point where it was almost a literal statement. He could swear that he was on the verge of losing it completely had he not had the tiniest sense of self-restraint.

This wasn't real. None of it was. It couldn't be. This was the sort of thing straight out of a Sci-Fi movie, Aliens, whatever kind of shit – you name it. Neither sickness or a parasite couldn't extract itself out of a body in the way it had done with him. It was supposed to break his immune system, damage his nerves, make him jump straight into a lobster tank and eat one of the lobsters alive without any consideration whatsoever to the many consequences of his actions. Those were the things that were orthodox about such maladies.

What it wasn't supposed to do was throw a dozen guards out the window, leave his apartment in a state of ruin, and take control of his body to the point where he did a flip in the air and knocked a guard over the head.

There was no way for it to actually be real.

Everything he had seen … from the thing that had taken control of March herself to the same thing that had taken control of him …

No.

"Mr. Brock," The utter state of calmness that resonated from the doctor's voice temporarily managed to snap him back to reality, and he promptly looked back at her and realized what he had done. Regret hit him like a brick to the face, but he didn't let go. His hands wouldn't budge, and he didn't know whether to credit that to his own anger or his sickness.

But the thing that scared him the most was that she did not seem affected by his behavior at all. She almost looked … what he could only describe as slightly melancholic, but nonetheless composed.

"Mr. Brock," she said again. "I know little more of this than you do, but if we manage to leave this place, then I will tell you everything that I know about them."

Them?

"Everything?" he asked, daring to hope. "You promise?"

He noticed how her eyes seemed to widen at the sound of the last word, but she didn't say anything to announce what had caused it. Her lips opened slightly as to let out a sound, but they didn't.

Instead, she simply nodded, and for some reason, that was enough to make him content.

Taking a deep breath one last time, Eddie promptly released his grip on her, allowing her to properly regain her balance as she slid back to the ground. However, his eyes didn't stray away from hers. He had much he wanted to say, much he wanted to demand the answers to, but he knew that he would not get it by being upfront and threatening. Patience was a virtue, but fuck he needed those answers.

"Is this all that was left of the specimen?" Axelson inquired as he studied the tube in his hands. "Nothing more and nothing less, right?"

"Right," Dr. Collins confirmed as he crossed his arms over his chest like a proud scientist who had just managed to invent a cure to cancer or some other type for supposedly incurable disease. "Carlton initially wanted me to get rid of it. 'Useless', he called it, but I disagreed. I think it still holds some value,"

"Hmmm," Axelson paid the man no mind as he continuously flipped the bottle over, observing the yellowish liquid as it lifelessly smeared itself up against the inside of its tiny containment. It was a small amount, barely amounting to three ounces at most if he was to make assumptions based on perspective alone.

"You know, I'm not really supposed to show you this," Collins said. "If Carlton knew of this, he would–"

"Killing you would be a sufficient method to dispose of anyone disloyal, I agree, and I wouldn't deem Drake as above it," Axelson said indifferently as he pulled the tube into the pocket of his uniform, sealing the zip shut.

"Hey! Hold on a moment–" As Dr. Collins reached to intervene, Axelson did not waste much time grabbing him up by his shirt, effortlessly lifting him above ground with his feet dangling slightly. The doctor squirmed in his grip and tugged harshly at his assailant's grip, though his attempts at freeing himself were ultimately futile. Axelson would have almost laughed at the spectacle had he not already been occupied with something far more critical than the pleas of a simple scientist.

He had what he came for. After six months of being stationed in that hellish place, he had finally managed to get his hands on the substance in that tube. While Simms would have preferred it if it was in a state of liveliness, as they had initially anticipated it to have been in, it had not completely lost its value. It could be … mended. They undoubtedly possessed the resources to do so, and right now, he had everything he needed.

That terrified expression on Dr. Collins was not out of the ordinary; wide eyes, quivering lips, struggling movements. Axelson had seen it before, with different people on different occasions. He had never killed an innocent one before, be it a man, woman or a child, but this sack of horseshit was as from being innocent as he himself was from Mars. He would have done the world a favor by ending his pathetic existence, and it made no difference to him. If he wanted to, he could easily snap the scientist's neck with the flick of his thumb, but he knew a death within the facility unrelated to the symbiotes would seem suspicious and warrant attention he couldn't afford to take care of.

He had seen what those creatures were capable of first-hand and, needless to say, Axelson found himself as excited as a child on a Christmas morning. Simms had not been lying when he first conveyed the news of these alien creatures being the potential protectors of humanity. Lethal protectors, true, but protectors nonetheless. Drake lacked the patience required to guarantee success, so he was easily deemed unfit to be in the possession of them. At first, Axelson had believed them to be mindless and unhinged, creatures who relished in bloodshedding and violence.

But then he came face to face with one of them, and his opinions changed drastically. He recalled seeing it there, standing there like a Queen in the midst of the corpses that had been sacrificed in her name and uttermost glory. A deity in need – no, deserving of being worshipped; A divine existence that put the Golden Calf and God Himself to shame. For a split moment, while he stood in that blood-coated room, he anticipated his eternal rest at the claws of the Queen. Instead, he discovered that not only the creature not only spared him a glance with its white eyes, but it had also deliberately granted him the right to live whereas the other members of his squad were all but slaughtered.

A truly, magnificent creature.

And if this specimen could grant them even the tiniest amount of that same divinity, then it would be worth it.

"Carlton will kill me if–"

"Let me worry about him," Axelson said and placed a finger over his lips. "For now, should Drake question the whereabouts of the remains of SYM-A03, tell him that you discarded the remains just as he wanted. That you grew bored with it. Do me that favor, and remember," He tightened the grip around Collin's throat, deliberately restricting his breathing until there was naught but vague gasps escaping his lips.

"If I hear of any snitching about what happened here, know that you might just end up begging Drake to kill you instead. I, on the other hand, will not be so lenient. Capiche?"

The bathroom was filthy, to say the least. The walls were covered in all kinds of graffiti drawings that depicted obscenities, the floors were drenched with different fluids – few of which she assumed to be water alone. She could detect at least seven different types of odors reeking in the air upon entering the stalls, and she would have identified them each separately as well had it not been for the urgency of the situation.

The moment she shut the door behind her, her first instinct was to make sure that the stalls were all unoccupied, which they were – save for a few bugs that had taken the liberty of inhabiting some of the toilets. Fortunately for her, the urge to relieve herself was not amongst her priorities at the moment.

The first thing she committed herself to was to clean herself of any traces that indicated that she had recently endured physical hardship. It was a simple matter to use the least filthy sink the bathroom could offer and wash her face; dust and other signs of collateral damage were quick to disappear with an easy swoop of water, leaving her face in a state of wellness, but fatigue as well. Upon looking back at her reflection in the mirror over the sink, she paused for a moment as she absorbed the image of her appearance.

Evelyn had seldom concerned herself about how she appeared to others. It was trivial, and by no means of any use to be considered attractive unless your intentions lied with seducing members of the higher parts of the hierarchy in which San Francisco placed their citizens. Her occupation alone ensured her a metaphorical place on the throne, but her overall characteristics arguably placed her at the lower steps.

And how that she looked at herself in the mirror, she could admit with honesty that had her appearance been put on the hierarchical ladder, she wouldn't even have made the first step. Her skin was considerably bleak, more so now than usual. Her eyes almost seemed as though they were sunken slightly back into her skull, and she could not find it in her vocabulary to even describe the state the rest of her body was in. She did not have any energy left in her to deduce what condition she was in – she was …. Too tired to do it. Nearly forty hours without any sleep wasn't something she hadn't undergone before, but it was nonetheless convenient in these circumstances.

Evelyn placed both her arms on top of the sink and just barely leaned her head into the mirror, feeling a wave of uncertainty wash over her. It was a foreign feeling, one she didn't know how to properly manage, but it was there nonetheless. Everything was … too unpredictable for her linking. Everything had changed, and she didn't know how to handle it in terms she could understand. Like a child being able to put the pieces of a puzzle together, but unable to make anything out of the image it depicted due to the complexity of it.

Her eyes trailed down her clothing, which had been thoroughly stained with her blood … Her blood. Slightly old, but still fresh enough to reek of a metallic scent that was typically accompanying its exterior presence. She knew that scent all too well to her liking, and it could seldom be credited by her occupation.

"You've never bled before? How dull, Evie."

"I can make you bleed if you want. It's easy."

She slammed her fist down on top of the sink, sending a wave of pain spiraling through nerves. For some reason, however, she didn't feel any of it upon impact. Even though she could feel her arm shake and vibrate from the hit, there was little that made her aware of the bruise that was on the verge of being born.

Blood…, she thought, she was bleeding … Not insignificantly either; it was a lot. It was her blood. It was hers. Just hers. Blood she had never seen exit her body in any other way; there always had to be an unnatural cause or affliction, like a wound of an accident. It never came naturally to her as it would any other woman, and for some reason, she felt a growing ache in her chest erupt from that thought.

She had been shot.

That's right. That's what had caused it all to start – the catalyst that sent it all into motion. A bullet.

She fell to her knees with an arm placed on top of her stomach, feeling a prominent pain grow there that outweighed the ones she felt before. Her chest began to shake for each breath she took and it seemed as though something wet was covering her shirt from the epigastric region of her abdomen.

Looking down at it, she discovered that both her shirt and her arm was wholly covered in blood.

There had been so, so, so, so, so, so, so much blood.

No, no, no, this wasn't supposed to be. Her body stiffened up and began to tremble, feeling cold and unable to control herself. She tried to remain calm, to regain her demeanor as it was meant to be. She wasn't supposed to behave so irrationally; not like this.

She lifted her blood-soaked shirt up to inspect the wound, only to discover that there was nothing there but a ghost of a scar where she had supposedly been shot; a trace of what vaguely resembled but a cut from the past. Traces of blood from her clothing covered parts of her skin, but otherwise, she was in no injured condition. It was as if whatever had affected her had occurred years ago.

She had been shot, killed, and that's when It had merged with her.

The Symbiote. It was … inside of her. Crawling, squirming like a tapeworm, she could practically feel live off her; Using her body. Feeding of her organs. Taking control of her like a puppet. She recalled vomiting blood in Mr. Brock's apartment; she could still taste the metallic on top of her tastebuds. She recalled the wind brush her face as dozens of people were slaughtered around her, she recalled the smell of more blood filling her nostrils – suffocating her - and she recalled all of their cries and their screams. Men, women, all of whom were equally silenced after mere moments of liveliness.

She had witnessed it with her own eyes and seen her own hands slice through those humans like scalpels through mere chunks of flesh. It had been so easy, too. So unbearably easy, and that had been… terrified her the most about it. How simplistic it was; "a piece of cake" as some would refer to it as. Even though she had not deliberately fulfilled the action herself, not entirely, she could still vaguely remember how swiftly Its claws had sliced through the soft, wet flesh of those people, how the warm liquid that once surged through their bodies drench her – its – claws.

Ironic, that's what it was. She had seen blood before, either when treating patients or herself due to natural accidents such as tripping or cutting herself while preparing food, but to see this much of hers in such a large amount threatened to send her in a state of hysteric shock. She had seen countless people die, and she had been indirectly responsible for a handful of those, but to physically be the one to drive the knife through them was … excruciating.

"You've never bled before? How dull, Evie."

No.

"I can make you bleed if you want. It's easy."

It wasn't supposed to be easy.

Killing …. She wasn't someone who killed. Her job was to save people, to help them. That's why she became a doctor in the first place; to help people, to save their lives and treat them of the maladies that plagued mankind, even at the expense of their own comfort.

"Are you sure about that?"

Yes, she was sure. That was her purpose in life.

"And exactly just how well have you managed that?"

Their names … She recalled all of their names.

Maria Nordstrom, Harry Beckley, Jacob Markson, Elliot Greenfield, Samantha Decker, Hugh Taylor, Mary Lopez, Conner Kensington, Emily Ross,

… Dora Skirth

They were all dead. All of them, and she had contributed to it.

She had been the person behind the trigger.

And the thing that was now circling through her system, countless people had perished at its hands. They had been killed slowly, painfully; choked on their own blood as their organs were tarnished and consumed from the inside; their bodies had jerked and twisted around uncontrollably as their nerves were torn apart, dissected like frogs on a table. In the end, all that had remained of their dignity were mutilated corpses; in states beyond human recognition.

And she had allowed it to use her.

"You have killed, you have tortured, you have destroyed; you have done all the things that you swore that you would never do. You have become just like HIM,"

"No …" She clutched her hands around her head, desperate to deafen the sound. She knew that it was nothing more than simply an auditory hallucination of some kind – most likely produced from the stress her body was undergoing – but that did not make it any more endurable. She wanted it out, out, out. She wanted it gone, this thing that was inside of her. She didn't want it anymore.

It had killed people – made her kill people. She wasn't a killer – she didn't want to be like him. Just as twisted, just as sick. She had spent years trying to rid herself of what had happened, but now it all came back to her. The blood was still fresh on her hands, just like it had been that day.

She had killed, she had tortured, she had destroyed.

Could it all be credited to the creature inside her alone?

The ungeheures Ungeziefer.

The monster?

The vermin?

The parasite?

Or was she to blame as well?

"Hurting people is fun, you know. It's so easy, too. The world exists only to be killed, and I will be the one to do it. You too, Evie. You'll also kill, someday."

Had she relished in the strength it provided her – like a drug? Was it something she genuinely had enjoyed, and just denied for the sake of self-preservation? Was she that arrogant that she denied her own culpability for the sake of her own pride?

She didn't know. For once in her life, Evelyn didn't know anything.

When she looked back into the mirror, her heart stopped and her body froze within the ghost of a second. Instead of seeing herself as she would have expected, HE was standing there; his lips stretched into an inhuman grin, his teeth flashing as it did. She could scarcely spot his eyes beneath his curly crimson hair, but the green in them were unavoidable to the core.

He looked at her in the same way a pet owner would look at their adorable kitten BEFoRE He mUtilaTed ItS CorpsE, but also the same way a predator would look at its prey just before making the kill.

CRASH!

Thousands of shards went their separate ways as her fist made contact with the hard mirror surface, few of which remained stuck in the skin of her knuckles. Her fist was shaking and still raised mid-air by the time she finally managed to register what had just happened. The cracks in the mirror showed several disoriented angles of her, but none showed any signs of red hair, which was more than something to be relieved about.

"He's not here …" she murmured breathlessly. "He's … not here …"

He never had been, for the past decade.

He was gone – for good.

Looking over at her bleeding knuckles, she quickly discovered that the wounds were gradually sewing themselves back together; the faintest glimpse of turquoise stretching over them as they healed. The pieces of glass that had been stuck to her flesh all fell down to the floor one by one as the skin returned back into the smooth surface that had been there before. The inadequate traces of blood disappeared along with the rest, leaving nothing behind at all to prove that she had been harmed.

Evelyn quickly traced her fingers over her hand, seeing no scars left behind, nor any drops of blood that would indicate in the slightest that she had just physically injured herself. There was absolutely nothing, which was more than she could say for the ones that had died because of it.

She couldn't keep herself from expressing her distaste, feeling her words reek with vehement loathing as she spoke. "Why?"

She looked into the mirror – into every piece that depicted a different angle of herself – but there came nothing at all.

"Why did you allow me to live, but took away their right to do the same?"

True, she had made some kind of 'agreement' with it, but that was beyond the comprehensible. It had been nothing more than a hallucination produced by her near-death experience; this thing could not communicate, nor could it understand anything. Letting her live … she did not know why it did it, but she knew that it was only a matter of time.

After all, it was an unpredictable creature, not human.

Though they hardly seemed different at this point.

"I will allow you to live if you allow me to do the same," she said, looking straight into the many small pieces. "But you will not make me a murderer,"

No answer, but she could feel something stir inside her chest.

"You will not make me … like him,"

Sensing a tingle in her right hand, Evelyn looked down and spotted the faintest turquoise color around her little finger. It was scarcely visible, almost at the brink of being nonexistent, but it was there.

As soon as it appeared, however, it went away.

"She sure is taking her time," Eddie said with a huff, irritability crashing down at him in equal speed with his tiredness. For the past half hour, they had been keeping low in one of those shaggy, old stores downtown with too many dropout urchins and drug dealers to make themselves known to the majority of the city. Ever since they left the apartment complex, he and March had ventured through the city in an attempt to get out of the LF's radar, but doing so proved to be much more challenging than they initially anticipated. Every black car, or every car in general, was a suspect, and he couldn't tell if that made him cautious or overly paranoid.

It was hard to tell those two apart considering the circumstances.

The store itself wasn't nearly half as bad as you would expect from someplace down in the slums. It was partially a convenience store and partially a café, less luxurious in terms of quality when you compared it to the likes of that of Mrs. Chen's, but no less affordable. Even with the low amounts of coins he still had in his pockets, Eddie was still able to buy himself a cheap sandwich and some soda from the counter without a problem. While the quality of the product could be discussed, it satiated his increasing hunger enough to avoid having … whatever was inside him complain.

Shortly after they arrived there, and after ensuring that they were not being followed or stalked by anyone with less than honorable intentions in mind, the first thing the doctor did was to proceed to the bathroom stalls without even telling Eddie about it. On second thought, he couldn't blame her. He imagined that walking around in bloodied clothing would warrant some attention they couldn't afford to have aimed their way at the moment.

So Eddie settled down in one of the least filthy seats he could find in the store – located in the furthest corner – and made do with what he could get, finishing his food at record speed and not saying a single word for the duration of it. Eating helped him feel better, and considering how the only people in the store were the eighteen-somewhat-old cashier behind the counter playing on his phone and a few urchins who paid no mind to him, Eddie relished in the solitude the place provided with.

The door to the bathroom stalls opened and March stepped out again, looking just as sharp and cynical as she did before everything escalated. With the exception of the dark circles beneath her eyes and the evident traces of fatigue, Eddie would not have guessed that she had endured any kind of significant hardship – at least, not the kind they had endured less than a few hours earlier. The main giveaway, however, was the fact that she still donned the bloodied lab-coat and shirt, which was a clue in itself that she had been involved in some kind of fight.

Her eyes scanned the entirety of the store before they fell on him, and she subsequently made her way towards him. She sat down on the seat on the other side of the table and said nothing, she just crossed her arms over her chest.

"Alright," he said, breaking the silence and jumping straight at it. "You owe me some answers,"

"Then ask," she said curtly, looking as though she was on the verge of blacking out from where she sat.

"First off, what the hell are these … these things that are inside of us?"

She seemed unimpressed with his inquiry. "You have already been provided with those answers," she responded, barely looking at him. "They are called symbiotes; the same ones Dora–…" She paused for a moment. "Dr. Skirth intended for you to receive evidence about so that they could bring the Life Foundation to an end."

"That still doesn't explain shit," he said. "What are they? How do they make us … hit things with superhuman strength and throw people out the window?"

For a second, she was unresponsive again. Her sharp eyes just, for once, were aimed at his and he suddenly found it hard to say anything else. It was like she was scrutinizing something about him; a teacher about to judge whether or not her pupil had done their homework or not.

"Perhaps you could inquire him yourself, Mr. Brock,"

"What – What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"She means you should ask me instead, idiot,"

Eddie immediately jerked his head to each side of the room, trying to find out – and praying that – whoever was speaking was currently in the store and not inside his head.

But there was no one but the cashier and those urchins who for some reason decided to scram.

"Mr. Brock," March called him, looking more annoyed than tired at this point. "The symbiote proves capable of verbal communication with its host. Does it– does he communicate with you?"

"I'm sorry, but did you just say he?"

"I did,"

"You're telling me that this … this parasite …"

"I'M NOT A PARASITE!"

" – This creature goes by a name?"

As March opened her mouth to answer, her eyes suddenly darted to something behind him and she promptly glued her lips together again – not uttering a single word.

Eddie quickly glanced over his shoulder to see the cashier looking at the both of them with wide eyes, his lips quivering as though he was freezing cold for some reason even though the temperature inside the store was just about right.

"Can we help you, buddy?" Eddie asked sharply, sounding more thuggish than he would have preferred toward an eighteen-old-somewhat kid who didn't look like he earned enough per hour to cover his tuition.

The kid pointed a trembling finger over to March, and only when Eddie turned back to look her did he realize what it was that had warranted such terrified behavior from the kid. The discovery made him want to smack himself over the head with a frying pan. Twice.

"You know," he said. "You really should consider changing into something less … bloodied if you wish to avoid drawing attention to yourself,"

"I don't have anything to change into," she replied, sounding like she was being questioned about something that was perfectly reasonable. "Nor do not feel inclined to walk bare on the streets. It would be inconvenient to receive a cold at this time."

"Okay," Eddie deadpanned and got up from his seat. "Wait here a moment."

As he approached the counter while counting the money he had left in his pocket, the cashier continuously moved up against the wall behind him until he could go no further. The poor kid's skin had paled so much that it would have made an anemic person go green with envy, and Eddie knew he couldn't blame him. Seeing someone covered in blood enter the store during your shift could only do so much to a person's psyche, but Eddie was adamant in trying to make things go easy for the both of them.

"Look, kid," Eddie said as he pulled every coin and dollar he could find and placed it on the counter. "We don't want any trouble. My friend here just got mugged, and we don't have much money, but you wouldn't happen to have some kind of leftover uniform shirt we could borrow, would you? Along with something to eat?"

While the money he had left could barely afford one of their sandwiches, much less a shirt, the cashier only nodded and, without even looking at the coins on the counter, quickly made his way into the back. Not even a minute later, the kid returned with a wrapped cheese-and-ham sandwich and a black turtleneck shirt with the store's logo badge embroidered at the heart of it. While the shirt itself seemed decent enough – longsleeved and comfy – the only problem was that it appeared to be twice as big as the size of the woman who was supposed to wear it.

Eddie thanked the cashier, who seemed more than happy to be left alone before he walked back to the seats where he expected to find the doctor up and around in time to receive the food and shirt.

Instead, he found her leaned against her seat – sound asleep and looking the most peaceful he had ever seen her. Pieces of her hair hung over her face, the dark circles under her eyes seemed more accommodating now than before, and it was almost strange to see her in such a state of helplessness.

Eddie sat down into his seat and placed both the shirt and the sandwich on top of the table, and he felt mildly tempted to wake her up and get the ordeal over with. He still had questions he wanted answers to, and it would only be a matter of time before Treece and the rest of his shitty group knocked on the door. But he couldn't find it in himself to disturb her rest. He wanted to get answers, but at the same time, he was feeling rather exhausted himself. Perhaps he could wait a moment longer.

He trailed his eyes over the sleeping figure which belonged to March, and he had to admit to himself that it was almost odd to see her that way; helpless and susceptible to dangers. In that brief period he had spent knowing her, all he ever got to see was a cold woman who hardly seemed to care about anything or anyone but herself. The way she spoke, behaved, even the way she moved reminded him more of some kind of robot than it did a living creature. He had seldom seen her eat anything, with the exception of those tater tots back at his place, and he had never seen her sleep like this.

Looking at her in such a state, perhaps the strangest thing was knowing that she was a human after all? Not a machine lacking emotions or general needs, but a human who required sleep and food just as much as he did himself. It made him wonder if she really was nothing more than a monster, or if she was actually a person.

He sighed and placed a hand on top of his face. "Shit,"