Disclaimer: I Do Not Own Avengers

What made the world real?

A knife slashed my shoulder.

Blood pooled up and spilled out of the shallow cut, trickling down my arm. I should have been worried, panicking, even scared. I had just been attacked and injured, after all. Instead, I grinned underneath the mask, covering my face and lunged forward before the enemy could strike again.

"Ahh!"

My enemy screamed in pain.

The wrist trapped in my hand bent at an unnatural angle, and the knife with my blood on it clanged as it hit the floor. I reached out and grabbed the dirty, greasy mugger I was fighting by the throat.

The body in this world was far stronger than the body on the other side, or rather the body lying down in the real world. That was what made my feat of strength possible.

Of course, even if everything I saw now was nothing more than a rendering of a 3D virtual reality, the fact that I was fighting for my life didn't change.

So I used my false strength and choked slammed the mugger. The concrete beneath our feet splintered, and the mugger's eyes rolled back.

I stared down at him. He was a familiar face. I had caught him twice before already, once two weeks ago, and four months before that.

When I used to read comics and watched cartoons and movies, I always wondered why? Why didn't the hero kill the criminals? Why did they keep sending the bad guys to jail when they just got out and killed again? It was to keep the story moving, of course, but what if it wasn't for the story? What if those heroes and villains were real? Would they make a different choice? Would I?

It was easy saying it when the villains were just fictional characters. Telling friends who read the same stories that if I was the hero that I'd stop the bad guys permanently.

Now?

Now the choice wasn't so easy. The thug in front of me could have been nothing more than an AI-controlled digital lump. Or it could have been another person. Another poor bastard who was trapped in this world right alongside me, I couldn't tell which. I would never be able to. The rules of this world were made clear when it started.

It was Schrödinger's cat. Only I would never be able to open the box.

If I killed the mugger, I would never know if somewhere in the other world someone's brain was fried by the most anticipated game console in history.

So in a sense, this mugger was alive.

This was reality. Everything in this world was real. There was no virtual reality or fakery of any kind.

I held the life of someone in my hands, and I had to decide what to do with it.

Whoever is on the other side doesn't have a choice. I thought as I picked up the muggers knife. The poor people, Mr. Sorrento, had 'gifted' his game console to didn't have a choice in what the characters they were attached to in this reality did.

A cold breeze blew through the alley, and police sirens rang somewhere in the city.

I sighed. I couldn't do it. All that talk about ending the threats was just that, talk.

Placing the knife inside my pocket, I looked up and aimed my hand at the top of the buildings. A string of black webbing shot from my arm attaching itself to the edge of the roof. I tugged, and it pulled back, dragging me five stories into the air.

A car with red and blue lights turned the corner as I landed on the roof. It was a typical cop car, and I knew that it was time for me to make my exit. The boys in blue didn't have any love for the vigilante they and the Daily Bugle labeled as a menace to society.

"Don't move! NYPD!"

I jumped off the roof, shooting another web line to the building across the street. The officers stepped out of their cruiser, and they glared up at me as I swung over them.

Swinging through the city, the movements were practically second nature now. I could do them without even thinking.

Thwip. . .and release. Thwip. . .and release.

I moved through the city silently. Passing over streets, and flipping over buildings as I made my way back home. It had been a long night, and the last time I had checked my phone, it was already past midnight. And that was at least an hour ago, maybe two.

Not that anyone's going to care that I was out all night. I thought as I landed on the roof of my apartment building. I crawled down the side of the building like an actual spider. Three stories down from the roof, there was one window that wasn't shut all the way. It was cracked open just enough for me to slide my fingers under the frame and push up.

Inside the apartment, the only light was the flickering of the television in the living room. I peeked into the room, and sure enough, sitting in front of the TV in his lounger was my dad. Passed out with a beer in hand and snoring up a storm.

I scoffed and walked down the hall to my room.

Charles Brock was a real piece of work.

As soon as I was in my room, I closed and locked the door. Charles never talked to me, much less came into my room, but it was better to be safe than sorry. If he ever found out I was the masked vigilante swinging around the city, he'd call the police in a heartbeat.

"I would not let him."

My suit peeled away from my skin. The black rubbery substance contorted into the shape of a human head.

"We can't kill him," I said. "We would be the cop's number one suspect."

"Then we kill them too."

"We aren't killing anyone. Stop asking." I scolded the symbiote.

I opened the mini-fridge in the corner of the room. Stacked from bottom to top were black Tupperware containers filled with food. I grabbed four and a soda from the door.

"Hurry up and eat, Eddie. Your liver is starting to look good."

I rolled my eyes and placed two of the containers in the microwave sitting on top of the fridge.

"You know, Venom, eating for two is starting to hurt my wallet. Mr. Jameson isn't exactly paying the big bucks for pictures of the vigilante anymore." I said as the food reheated.
"We're old news."

"Then why do we not steal from the bad people?" suggested Venom.

It was tempting. And I couldn't say that I hadn't thought about it now and again, but no.

"I don't want the cops, or gods forbid the Avengers from getting wind of it."

That would really screw up my life. With Venom, I was far stronger than the average joe, but going up against the Avengers? Even with superpowers, my only hope would be to escape. No way could I beat them in a fight. And with Tony Stark's resources, they would find me again. I'd be on the run for the rest of my life.

"You are being dramatic. The Avengers don't care about criminals losing money."

I didn't bother answering. Venom, as helpful as the symbiote was, he wasn't the most emotionally stable being. In fact, I'd say he was a sociopath. So we didn't always agree on everything. Really the only thing we did agree on was keeping me alive.

The microwave beeped, and I pulled out my food and stuck the next two containers in. Venom didn't talk anymore and melted back into my skin.

As I ate my dinner, I thought back to that day.

Six months ago.

The day everything ended and began.

(Six Months Earlier)

The yacht plunged into the angry swells of the dark, furious sea. The waves rose to Goliathan heights, crashing into the hull with the power of raw tonnage; the white spray caught in the night sky cascaded down over the deck under the force of the night's wind. Everywhere there were the sounds of inanimate pain, wood straining against wood, ropes twisting, stretched to the breaking point.

Two abrupt explosions pierced the sounds of the sea and the wind. They came from the dimly lit cabin that rose and fell with its ship. A man lunged out of the door grasping the railing with one hand, holding his stomach with the other.

A second man followed the pursuit cautious, his intent violent. He stood bracing himself in the cabin; he raised a gun and fired again. And again.

The man at the railing whipped both his hands up to his head, arching backward under the impact of the fourth bullet. The yacht's bow dipped suddenly into the valley of the two giant waves lifting the wounded man off his feet; he twisted to his left, unable to take his hands away from his head. The ship surged upwards, bow and midship more out of the water than in it, sweeping the figure in the doorway back into the cabin, a fifth gunshot fired wildly.

The wounded man screamed, his hands now lashing out at anything he could grasp, his eyes blinded by blood and the unceasing spray of the sea. There was nothing he could grab, so he grabbed at nothing; his legs buckled as his body lurched forward. The boat rolled violently leeward, and the man whose skull was ripped open plunged over the side into the madness of the darkness below.

(Game Over)

"Crap."

Rays from the midday sun broke through the visor of a high tech helmet. I sat up, my eyes were wide, and my heart was pounding.

I had just died.

Not literally, of course. But it sure felt that way. I glanced up at the numbers displayed in the top right corner of my field of vision. Midnight was five minutes away, and when today finally ended, the most anticipated game in history would launch.

The Oasis.

It wasn't the first Virtual Reality game, VR had been around for years now, and the first game had been released years ago. No one remembered that game anymore.

No, we were all focused on the game that would allow us, the players, to FullDive into not just one, but a dozen of the most popular fictional universes ever created. I'm talking about the Wizarding World, Narnia, Middle-Earth, Star Wars, Westeros, Whoniverse, DC, and more. All of them playable, and all of them separate from each other and the universes of other players unless chosen otherwise.

I pulled my Nerve Gear from my head and set it down on my bed. Following the cord connected to the back of the console to the PC next to my bed, I switched games. At the moment, I was logged into the Bourne universe. Fun, but not what I was going to be playing for the next ten hours. I moved the cursor to the red and white Marvel logo and clicked. As Marvel Universe was loaded into my Nerve Gear, I laid back down flat on my bed and set the Nerve Gear back on my head, waiting for midnight.

Tomorrow started, and I smiled.

"Link Start!"

My entire world went dark. There was nothing but black and silence as the transceivers in the Nerve Gear began blocking the sensory information from my body. I never liked the transition from the real world to the virtual one. Even if it was just a few seconds, the quiet and the dark bothered me.

It was a relief when heard a soft (Bing!), and a text window lit up the dark.

"Would you like to load your Beta test character?"

I reached out and pressed the green "Yes" circle.

Behind the text window, a room appeared. It was a standard room. Not overly expensive, but also not a rundown dump. There was a bed in the corner and desk by the window, and the floors were hardwood. I knew it was strange that in a world where I could live anywhere, I chose to live in such a normal room. But that just made the world seem more real. Something that was nearly impossible thanks to the bright minds that created the Oasis.

I moved to the full-length mirror in the corner of the room. The face looking back at me wasn't my own. Everything that made me who I was IRL was gone. My hair was now a dirty blonde instead of dark brown. I was a few inches shorter than the six feet I stood IRL, and my eyes had changed from blue to brown. If I hadn't been one of the lucky few who had been able to play the closed beta of Oasis, I would have been shocked, but after the thirty-day beta, I had grown used to the change.

I was in the Marvel universe now, and the real me had no place here.

Until I logged out, I was Eddie Brock.

"Players!" the television attached to the wall flickered to life.

Nolan Sorrento, the genius creator of the Oasis, appeared on the screen.

"Welcome to my world."

His world? I didn't understand. Mr. Sorrento was the creator of the Oasis, so he certainly had godlike powers in this world, enabling him to change the world at will, but there were not hundreds of thousands of universes now that the Oasis had been officially released. Mr. Sorrento couldn't possibly be the GM for all of them.

"My name is Nolan Sorrento. And right now, I am the only person who can control this world."

I moved from the mirror to the twin bed in front of the TV and sat down on the corner so I could hear the announcement better. I didn't want to miss anything.

Mr. Sorrento, both game designer and genius in the field of quantum physics, was the one responsible for the creation of both the Oasis and the Nerve Gear. As a hardcore gamer, I respected the man deeply. I bought all the magazines that featured him and watched all of his interviews.

"You have not discovered it yet, but the Log Out button has disappeared from the main menu. This is not a bug; it is how the Oasis was always meant to be played."

The announcement continued, Mr. Sorrento's voice echoing around the room. "There is no way to leave this world."

No way to leave? I didn't understand. What did Mr. Sorrento mean by that? Was this some a joke? Sooner or later, someone in the real world would take my Nerve Gear off and sever my connection to this world.

The next thing Mr. Sorrento said crushed that small hope. "Also, the disruption or dismantling of the Nerve Gear from the outside is strictly forbidden. If these things are attempted, the signal sensors in your Nerve Gear will emit a strong electromagnetic pulse, destroying your brain and stopping all of your basic functions."

I stared at my idol. I knew that I had heard correctly, but my brain refused to believe it.
Destroy my brain?

In other words, kill me.

Any user that turned the Nerve Gear off or unlocked the clasp and took it off would be killed. That is what Mr. Sorrento had just said.

"To be a little more specific, disconnection from an outside source of electricity for ten minutes, being cut off from the system for more than two hours, or any attempt to: unlock, dismantle, or destroy the Nerve Gear. If any of these conditions are met, the brain destruction sequence will start. These conditions have been made known to the government and the public through mass media in the outside world. On that note, there have been several cases where the relatives or friends have ignored the warnings and tried to remove the Nerve Gear forcefully. The result. . .regretfully 112 players have already exited this world, and the other world, forever."

One hundred twelve people were dead? My head spun at the number. How was that even possible? I had only been in the game for a few minutes. How could over two hundred people have been killed? It had to be a lie. It had to be.

As if to dispel my hope, Mr. Sorrento's business-like voice resumed his explanation.

"There is no need to worry about the bodies you left in the other world. As of this moment, all TV, radio, and internet media are repeatedly reporting this situation, including the fact that there have been numerous deaths. The danger of having your Nerve Gear taken off has already all but disappeared. In a moment, using the two hours I will provide, you will be transported to a hospital or a similar institute and given the best treatment. So you can relax and focus on living your new life."

I sat motionless as what was happening sank in. Mr. Sorrento was telling me that I was stuck in this virtual world forever. There was no escape. I could never go home.

"I ask you to understand that the Oasis is no longer a game. It is a second reality. There will be no leveling, no quests, and no HP. Anything game related has been erased from the Oasis."

The green bar in the top left of my vision and the clock in the bottom right vanished. I was now seeing the world as I would in the real world.

"The Oasis, as you know, is the pinnacle of creation. This reality is now as real as the one you left behind." on screen, Mr. Sorrento smiled.

Before I leave you, there is one more thing I must tell you."

What now? I glared at the television. I couldn't imagine how my current predicament could get any worse.

"The thousands of Nerve Gears my company gifted to quadriplegics, paraplegics, coma patients, and other adults and children who would have otherwise spent their lives in beds or chairs are now connected to the people in your world. They are indistinguishable from the A.I. controlled NPC's inhabiting this reality."

Son of a bitch! I grabbed the closest thing to him, the lamp next to my bed, and I chucked it at Mr. Sorrento's smug face.

I knew what the prick was talking about. It had been all over the news during the months leading up the launch of the game. Mr. Sorrento, the generous billionaire, had given thousands of Nerve Gears to the sick, dying, or paralyzed people who wouldn't be able to live a normal life. I had thought it was great when I first heard about it. But now I understood. Mr. Sorrento hadn't done it out of the kindness of his heart. The bastard did it, so the people he trapped in his 'new worlds' had an incentive to not just find some sleepy town in the Midwest and live a safe and quiet life far away from trouble.

I could still do that, though. I didn't owe the people Mr. Sorrento was holding captive a thing. It wasn't my job to save them. I wasn't an actual hero. I could still leave and go live in Oregon or Wyoming or something. But would I? And if I did, would I be able to live knowing that I was letting people, real people, die because I was afraid? And what about when Thanos collected the Infinity Stones and snapped his fingers? I had a fifty-fifty chance of being wiped from existence.

Mr. Sorrento hadn't said anything about losing my character, or the abilities I had chosen for Eddie to have. That meant I would have the power to make a difference. Was it right for me to run?

"You are probably wondering, why? Why is the creator of both the Nerve Gear and the Oasis, Nolan Sorrento doing something like this? Is this some sort of terrorist attack? Is he doing this to ransom us?" Mr. Sorrento's voice came from the Alexa in the corner.

I couldn't care less about why the psycho did this. His reasons didn't matter. All that mattered was that I was trapped and now held the lives of real people in my hands.

"These are not the reasons why I am doing this. Not only that but for me, there is no longer a reason or a purpose in doing this. The reason is that this situation itself was my purpose in doing this. To create and watch worlds is the only reason I have created the Nerve Gear and the Oasis. And now, everything has been realized."

There was a short pause, Mr. Sorrento's voice, now smug again, spoke.

"This concludes the official launch for my Oasis. I wish you luck in your new life."

The last sentence trailed off with a faint echo.

"Eddie!"

I jumped as my door shook from the pounding it was receiving.

"What the hell was that noise, boy?"

"Nothing, I dropped something," I called back.

The person on the other side of the door scoffed, obviously not believing my less than stellar lie.

"Whatever, I'm not replacing whatever thing you're dumbass broke. We leave in fifteen minutes, be ready, or you get left behind."

I heard footsteps as the man behind the door walked away. That was Charles Brock, my character's father. A real piece of shit human, and an even worse father. A father that I was now stuck with for the rest of my life because I was trapped in this hell.

"Fuck!"

"Watch your mouth, boy!" Eddie's father roared from somewhere in the house.

I rolled my eyes. Most parents didn't like their children cursing, but Eddie's father wasn't a regular parent. He was a cold and distant man who blamed his son for killing his wife during childbirth. I hadn't lived the past I had created for my character, but I had designed it, and Eddie's father only did only enough to keep the CPS off his back. Other than that, Eddie Brock was on his own.

Which means the neighbors are out. I thought as I grabbed the bag sitting on my bed and headed for the door.

(Hours Later)

I stared up a the stars lighting the night sky. I was lying on the roof of a 15' U-Haul truck. The world around me was quiet, so hauntingly quiet. Not that it was a bad thing. I was fifteen, and the only person around to talk to was my 'father' who was sleeping inside the motel we had stopped at for the night.

Charles Brock.

Someone who I would rather not talk to if I could help it. And the feeling was mutual. That was why I was on the roof wrapped up in a sleeping bag. It was bad enough we had to spend hours cramped together in the cab of the truck during the day. I would take sleeping out in the elements over spending another second with my father any day of the week. Thankfully I didn't have to.

We'll be in New York tomorrow. And we can start avoiding each other again. I thought with no small amount of glee. It wasn't the relationship I wanted, but there was nothing I could do to fix it now.

I felt my eyes starting to burn and knew that I was crying. I had thought I was crying, but no matter how many times I told himself, this is the last time, the tears always came back. I wished I could stop. It was pointless. Crying wouldn't change anything. Mr. Sorrento wouldn't see my tears and release me from this world. The psychopath would probably laugh.

Above me, the dark sky lit up red.

A shooting star. I smiled, watching the firey ball fly through the sky. I knew it wasn't a star. At the speed it was flying, it had to have been inside the earth's atmosphere. It was just a small meteor, though, so there was no danger. I closed his eyes and made a wish completely missing the black mass falling from the sky.

"Ah-mmph!"

My eyes shot open. Everything was still dark, but I knew they were open.

This is it! In my chest, my heart was pounding.

"Hello, Eddie.

"Venom." I smiled as the voice spoke inside my head.

A/N: Just finished reading 'The Spider' by I'mjusttryingtofindmyway and was inspired to write this. It's a great story, and if you haven't read it, you definitely should.