Chapter 8
SEVERAL MINUTES BEFORE
Where am I? My-my head feels like…like…oh god, where is it? Where are you!
Eddie Brock had lost track of everything from the past few hours. His memory just wouldn't let him remember the events of the night before. Did I get drunk or…wait, it's coming back…
Bit by bit, it came back to him. He had taken Mary Jane to the rooftop, Spider-man had followed, and then there was something…a knight or something. No, no, an alien thing. It attacked Spider then it…it…
Oh god, it took us, it took my other half' Eddie thought, the realisation of the key to his memory loss a shock; part of him had been stolen, not all of him, but enough to make him give back his hostage and blackout. And now here he was, without his symbiote, in an alley by…by…Where am I?
DAILY BUGLE BUILDING, JAMESON'S OFFICE, 3:30pm
"'Extraterrestrial Terrorist Wreaks Havoc!' Whadda you think?" J. Jonah Jameson stood before his audience, testing his headline ideas for the evening edition of the Daily Bugle.
"Er, I'm afraid we've already used that one" said Ben Urich, unaware of how to say to his boss that he was becoming forgetful without being fired. Luckily, it worked; he only got an angry glare from Jonah before the publisher blurted out his next idea.
"'Little Green Man Makes Message of Murder!'"
"But Jonah, it hasn't killed anyone. All it's done is attack Spider-man-" Joe 'Robbie' Robertson wished he hadn't opened his mouth. Any mention of the wall crawler in front of Jonah would surely result in-
"They were probably working together!"
There it was, the response he had been expecting. "Besides, it's not little. Reports confirmed that it was up to seven feet tall, if not more. And it was hunting Spider-man, not helping him. Nor was Spider-man helping it."
"So it's a hunter, eh?" Jameson put all of his brain power into thinking of a name based on the word 'hunter'. It didn't take long. "How about 'the Hunter'?"
Betty Brant opened her mouth to reply, but Jameson already knew what she was going to say. "No, people will confuse it and Kraven. Are you sure it wasn't Kraven?"
Robbie checked the interview reports. "They said 'tall, armour plated, blades-"
"Do any mention a crappy moustache?"
"Er…no" replied Robbie, wondering how Jameson could criticise the villain for his facial hair with that Hitler-wanabe on his top lip. "In fact, it says it wore a mask or a helmet or something."
"Be more specific!" barked the flat-topped tyrant.
"That's what it says; 'It wore a mask or helmet or something.'"
Jameson mumbled something about the public not giving decent interviews like they used to before announcing his next idea. "'The Bug Catcher'-no, too corny… 'The Spider Slay-'taken…"
He paced up and down his office for more than a minute, mumbling. None of his present employees dared help him; last time someone did that, they were on 'Lizard-spotting-duty' for a month. Crawling through the sewers, looking for a lizard in a lab coat was not an interesting career move from their point of view.
Suddenly, J. Jonah Jameson spun around to face his workers, a great big, sinister grin across his Adolf-ish features.
"I've got it!"
EARLIER THAT DAY…
Eddie had been searching for hours before he finally found his symbiote in Central Park. For some reason, it was lay on the ground in an open space, feeling the surface, then moving a little further onward.
They immediately joined, concealed by trees. It was a wonderful feeling, Eddie thought, that he could now grieve with his other half over their loss, once they realised what it was. Slowly, it came to them both as they shared memories.
MEANWHILE, ABOVE VENOM, IN THE SHIP
The creatures were becoming uneasy.
Their prize was changing. They didn't know what caused it; perhaps it was the Venom creature lurking near their ship, a call for help.
All they new was that their symbiote, once a pool of pure blackness, had slowly turned a dark shade of blood red…