Author's Note: Shit hits the fan this chapter. I own nothing.

40. Said the Spider to the Spider

Piper was having a hell of a week. That was the only way she could think to describe it. She was back at Eddie's apartment upgrading his computer with some of the spare parts and the soldering kit from her home lab. Something about this whole situation left a bad taste in her mouth. She had talked to Eddie about it a bit more and they had agreed that it was a good idea to let her dad in on the whole situation. She was planning on telling him tonight. Eddie was out of the apartment, he'd given her a spare key. She set down her tool and sighed. There were a few other people she wanted to bring in on the secret but she wasn't sure she should. The team was SHEILD. They lived on SHEILD property, they trained at SHEILD, they followed SHEILD orders. SHEILD had let someone get away with murder. The plane her parents had been on hadn't even been a private one. It had been a regular Boing 747, it hadn't been a full flight. But there had been nearly two hundred people on that plane. No one had made it out alive, but they hadn't found all the bodies. In the twelve years since a few bones had surfaced but they were too damaged to identify. Piper glanced over at her laptop. It was open to a list of people still missing presumed dead from the crash. There were thirteen names on that list but one stood out to her. Dr. Otto Octavius. It seemed too big a coincidence that he'd been on that plane too, with everything she'd learned from Doctor Conners and everyone else she'd talked to about his mysterious change in personality after joining Oscorp.

And there was the second thorn in Pipers brain. Oscorp. Norman Osborn's company. Harry's dad's company. Something in it had been rotten enough twelve years ago to send two undercover SHEILD agents in. And they'd found something. That might be what bothered her most was that they'd clearly found something bad enough to kill over. Bad enough to kill almost two hundred people over. And whatever they had found was sitting, encrypted, in a usb in Queens. A usb only she could access, but that she couldn't decrypt. She rolled her head around her neck trying to work out a kink in her shoulder. She coughed, rubbing at her eyes. Unfortunately, spider healing didn't do much against the common cold, even when it was most likely induced by stress. Piper's phone alarm went off and she popped the cover back on Eddie's computer. She stifled a sneeze in her elbow as she switched off her computer and slid it into her bag along with the usb. She left the apartment and locked up. She really didn't think she would make it by web slinging to school so she caught a cab.

Sam really couldn't hide it anymore, he was seriously worried. It had been a few days since he'd talked to Piper, she hadn't shown up to any of the training she was supposed to, Fury was pissed. She'd avoided Coulson and she hadn't told him anything about what was going on but every time Coulson walked into a room she had to be in she got this look in her eyes. Distrust and anger turning her blue eyes steely. He couldn't figure out what was going on, but he was going to, no matter what.

Piper leaned her head against her locker. The cool metal felt great on her head. She really should have taken Pepper's advice and just stayed home. She pulled a tissue out of her pocket and blew her nose loudly.

"Ouch, that doesn't sound good." Piper jumped. It wasn't often someone could sneak up on her. Clint and Natasha were two of the only people who could manage it. She turned and looked into Harry's eyes, but they didn't quite look like Harry's. They were darker, swirling with black. Now that she looked she could see the effects of the symbiote. She forced a smile, then let loose a loud deep cough into her sleeve which Harry seemed to pass off as the reason for her smile being so fake.

"No, it's nothing, just a cold." Piper sniffled whipping her nose on the tissue still in her hand. Harry reached out and Piper tried not to flinch back but she didn't quite manage it. She grinned slightly surpassing another cough.

"Wouldn't want to spread the cold." He smiled. Was it just her or did it look a bit sinister?

"You're so sweet Piper." There was a breathless pause before his smile grew wider and a touch more genuine. He grabbed her hand in his and leaned closer.

"I want to show you something." Before Piper could protest Harry was dragging her off to a nearby janitor's closet. Mary Jane grinned as she spotted her best friends slipping into the closet. She rolled her eyes.

"About time." She muttered under her breath.

Piper's face was bright red, and it was only partially because of the fever. A janitor's closet was not the coziest of places. She already knew that, having used the school's janitors closet to change into her costume. She'd never been in a janitor's closet with someone else though. She laughed nervously as Harry grinned.

"I know you already figured out that I'm Spider-man but I want to show you how I did it." He let go of her hand and brought his wrist up to eye level. It looked like one of Harry's regular watches, digital and expensive. Piper raised an eyebrow at him. He grinned and tapped the button on the side of the watch. The top of the watch folded back and the symbiote stretched out covering Harry from head to toe, morphing him into the Spider-man within seconds. Piper jumped back as much as was possible in the tiny enclosed space. The mask grinned at her before peeling back to reveal Harry's face.

"Isn't it cool?" Harry was grinning but Piper's heart was going a mile a minute, memories of watching helpless trapped in her own head as the thing her friend was now wearing as casually as he normally wore Armani rampaged hurting her team, her friends. Harry must have noticed Piper's distress because he frowned.

"Piper are you ok?" Piper shook her head.

"Harry where did you get that thing?" Harry's frown deepened.

"Why does it matter? Think about how proud my dad is gonna be when he finds out I'm a hero." Piper was watching the suit closely.

"Harry, this is important, where did you get that thing?" Harry sighed.

"I found it, at my house after the party." Piper's heart sank. That was exactly what she hadn't wanted to hear.

"Harry, doesn't that mean that that's the thing that attacked your party. The thing that threw me through a window. The thing that Spider-girl had to show up and stop. The thing that almost killed her." Harry scoffed but something was going on with his eyes again, they were getting a touch clearer and more confused by the second.

"Spider-girl is obsolete. Finished. We'll beat her soon and then we'll be the only spider in town." Piper was feeling worse about this situation by the minute.

"Harry, who's we?" Harry froze his eyes clearing to their usual sky blue for the first time in weeks. He looked down and his eyes went wide and panicked. The symbiote rippled and Piper tried to go for the door but Harry was standing between her and it. Or at least the thing that had been Harry was. It clearly wasn't him anymore. She heard a faint scream from inside the tar like substance and then it closed over him again but this time something was different. The symbiote rippled again and grew, larger more muscular, filling the room as the bell in the hallway outside rang for the start of third period. A snarl rang through the room as a great black maw full of pointed fangs ripped itself open and a tongue longer than her torso ran over the ruined lips of the symbiote, Venom's lips. Piper was trapped. Venom smiled.

"We are Venom."