Just as Gaxton felt that he was finally making progress, a tremendous racket suddenly began outside. It sounded like things were getting trashed, and there was a lot of screaming as well. He froze, his pen still in hand as the noise eventually stopped. Suddenly, one of his employees all but burst clean through his office door, his face looking white as a sheet and his eyes wide with horror as he rushed up to his desk.

"We have to leave sir," the man insisted, "now!"

"Why?" Gaxton questioned, concerned by his employee's panicked expression.

"He's here!" the guy proclaimed.

"Who?" Gaxton asked. "Spider-Man?"

Suddenly, the man was jerked away from his desk and back to the doorway, where a giant, black monster with a white spider symbol across its chest caught him. The creature smiled a wide, toothy smile.

"No," it proclaimed in a deep, almost inhuman voice, "we are much worse."

The creature then proceeded to toss the man violently through the wall before turning its attention over to Gaxton, walking up to him. The man sank to the floor as the wide, brutish-looking monster came over to him, reaching down for him and picking him up by the right shoulder, raising him up to head level.

"I-I thought you were a myth?" Gaxton questioned.

"We will make you wish we were," the creature replied, its monstrous mouth bursting into a demonic smile.

"P-please," the man begged, his voice suddenly growing shaky as the creature's cold, pupil-less eyes stared at him. "T-take whatever you want."

"You see, that's something us and Spider-Man actually do have in common," the creature explained. "Like him, we want information on who the new head of New York City's criminal enterprise is. However, we will warn you that, unlike our former red and blue counterpart, this will end much worse for you personally if you do not give us what we want to know."

The creature then opened its mouth, revealing a long and slimy tongue that it proceeded to slap across Gaxton's face, the man feeling both grossed out and even more intimidated as a result.

"I-I don't know," Gaxton explained before quickly following up. "I don't even know his real name. H-he's never contacted me directly, only through associates."

"What associates?" the creature questioned, raising its tone and getting more in Gaxton's face, causing him to shut his eyes and turn away.

"T-there's one in particular," the man clarified, "a guy with a dome-shaped head. S-supposedly they had to put metal in it for some reason, no one knows. The guys started to call him Hammerhead a while back, and the name just stuck I g-guess."

The creature then brought itself even closer to Gaxton, slowly opening its mouth as if it were about to eat him.

"No," he muttered. "NOOOOO!"

Suddenly, the creature drew back, laughing.

"S-so you're letting me go now?" the man dared to ask. "I-I told you what you wanted to know, didn't I?"

"Indeed, you did," the monster replied, "and if we understand how this all works correctly, if we leave you alone here, this 'Big Man' or whoever he is will eventually find out you told us and will send someone to kill you. Is that correct?"

"Y-yes," Gaxton replied after a moment, realizing that he hadn't even considered that this whole time. He'd been so focused on the terrifying creature in front of him...

"Well, why don't we save the man some trouble..."

Peter's eyes began to flutter open, taking a moment to adjust to the light overhead. Once they did, he soon began to survey the scene. He was in a bedroom, but not his own. He then glanced to his left, believing he'd caught sight of another person in his peripheral vision that way. When he did, he realized that it was Mary Jane, her face buried in her arms as she lied it on side of the bed. Slowly, he reached over towards her with his left hand, placing it on her arm. He rubbed it back and forth, his fiancé soon stirring from her sleepy state. Barely a second after she made eye contact with him, her eyes widened in shock, her mouth hanging open.

"Hey beautiful."

M.J.'s lips curled into a smile as she leaned over to him, wrapping her left arm around the back of his shoulder area in a hug. He could feel a groan threatening to come over him from how sore he was, but he fought from fully releasing it, instead returning the gesture by wrapping his right arm around the woman he loved. They held that position for a moment before M.J. readjusted her position, clutching his cheeks in her hands and kissing him repeatedly on the side of his head. She then pulled back, allowing Peter to see the tears that had been streaming down her cheeks even as she smiled.

"You scared me to death."

"Yeah, sorry about that," he said. "It wasn't exactly how I was hoping for it to go."

Peter's Aunt May then came in the doorway, relief evident on her face as well as she came over to him.

"Glad you're back," she said, giving him a motherly kiss on his forehead, followed by a hug of her own. For a moment, Peter allowed himself to just take in the fact that he had lived to see the two people he loved most another day. Soon, however, his mind began to produce questions.

"What happened?" he asked. "How did I get here?"

"I found you, after your fight with that thing," M.J. explained. "With some help, I was able to get you up here, where your aunt and I have been taking care of you ever since."

"How long have I been up here?" he asked. M.J. and May didn't initially respond, only glancing at each other, so he repeated his question.

"A week," his fiancé finally replied.

A week? He'd been out of commission that long?

Sitting up, Peter groaned through the soreness he felt in his mid-section and chest area. His head had begun to throb with the motion too, but he ignored the pain despite the protests of his loved ones as he got up from the bed, moving to the living room. Finding M.J.'s television, he quickly turned it on, finding the closest news channel. Sure enough, he found just the report he was looking for.

"Tonight marks the seventh straight night of these brutal killings," the reporter on the sight of Eddie's latest victims explained. "According to reports, these two men were assaulting a 20-year-old college student from ESU before the creature arrived on the scene. Like many others before her, when asked to describe her rescuer, she nearly burst into tears as she thought about what she had seen. While she was certainly grateful to have been rescued, she is proof that, whoever or whatever this thing is, it is spreading terror to more than just its victims. There appears to be no end to these reports as well, especially with Spider-Man likely no longer with us."

Shutting the TV off, Peter tossed the remote against the couch in frustration before beginning to walk back to the bedroom.

"Where are you going?" M.J. asked.

"I have to stop him," Peter said. No sooner had the words left his mouth than he felt a shooting pain suddenly surge through his abdominal area, his head pounding harder than before as well and making him drop to his knees.

"You're in no condition to go anywhere," May explained to him as she and M.J. helped Peter sit back against a nearby wall.

"Your aunt is right," M.J. added. "You just spent the last week in basically a coma so that you could even come back at all. May thinks you might have suffered internal bleeding to go with your severe head trauma and who knows what else."

"I can't just sit here," Peter argued, rubbing his head. "I have to save him."

"Save who?" M.J. asked.

Peter raised his head, looking his fiancé in the eye.

"Eddie."

M.J. shook her head, squinting in confusion.

"What? What do you mean?"

Peter swallowed.

"The symbiote, the creature that bonded to my suit and tried to take me over... it found him and took him over."

The eyes of the women suddenly lit up with understanding, especially M.J.'s. Still, there were questions.

"How did it find him?"

"The church," Peter said. "Our Lady Of Saints Church is where he and Anne attend. He must have gone there recently; the symbiote probably sensed all the anger in him. He calls himself 'Venom' now."

"So... he's the one out there that's been killing all those criminals?" M.J. questioned.

Peter nodded.

"He's lost, but he's not gone."

"Peter," May spoke up, "I know that you like to believe the best in people; it's what Ben and I taught you. But your friend... it sounds like he's not himself."

"He isn't," Peter affirmed, "but before he dropped me, he let me see his face, just once. He made me a promise that he would protect the two of you once I was gone."

"No offense, but that's a little hard to believe given what he did just before that," Mary Jane explained, the frustration in her tone not escaping Peter's attention.

"I know, he's definitely messed up," Peter reasoned. "The symbiote's in his head, feeding off his hate, but I could tell that, at least for a moment, the Eddie Brock I know is still in there. I know how it seems, but I have to try and get through to him."

"How do you expect to do that?" May asked. "He beat you worse than anyone you've ever faced before has."

Peter lowered his gaze, contemplating her question. Really, both the ladies were right; normally, he'd been able to get away with pushing through injuries and pains, but the beating he'd taken from Eddie had all but killed him. He needed a way to level the playing field, and that's when he remembered...

"Sound."

"What?" M.J. asked.

"The symbiote, it's vulnerable to loud sounds and high frequency noises," he said. "It's partly how I was able to separate from it. I just need to make something that will generate the kind of noise that's needed to make it become unstable again and sever their bond. Can one of you bring me a piece of paper and something to write with?"

May got up and brought him what he requested, and Peter proceeded to jot down a list of supplies.

"These are the things I should need to put together a small device that can generate what I need," Peter said. "We may need to get some supplies from a local store, but it should work."

He handed the paper to M.J, both her and May examining it. They looked skeptically at Peter and at each other, but ultimately helped him up, seemingly agreeing to the idea. Working quickly, they began searching for what he needed.

Every second lost could mean another body dropped, and Eddie lost more of his soul.

Finally, after devoting nearly all their waking hours to their cause, they'd found him. It had taken a lot of digging and more than a few lead chases, but Venom had finally discovered the man they'd been looking for, the man who ran virtually the entirety of the criminal underworld in New York City. The Hammerhead lead had ended up being the big break he needed, having tracked where he frequented and where he always came back to. Now, it was time for action.

Venom stood up, ready to leap out the window to head across the city to meet the one they needed to see. However, just before they could, their phone began ringing. They peered down at it, observing the picture of Anne as her contact popped up. For just a moment, the symbiote partially receded, revealing the face of Eddie Brock as they picked up the phone, staring at it. Maybe it really was Anne, or maybe it was her parents calling for him. Either way, Venom considered answering, just for a moment, but that moment passed by as they hit ignore. The symbiote reestablished itself over Eddie's face just before they turned and leapt out the window, determined to let nothing stop them.

Making their way across the city, Venom soon found themselves at one of the tallest buildings in the city. There was no name across the top, nor any other indications on the outside of who owned it or what company it belonged to, but some digging into financial records had yielded all that they needed to know. It belonged to a coward; a man who hid himself and his true nature up in his ivory tower, controlling the lives of thousands if not millions of people from up there.

Venom eventually landed on the window, slipping in through one of the open panels. Crawling along the elevated ceiling, they then dropped down in the center of the room.

"Hello there," they proclaimed, "Big Man!"

The man, who possessed an unusually blue complexion, maintained a steely, composed gaze, not even bothering to say a word. He then reached over and pressed a button on his desk, and seconds later, armed security swarmed the room, their guns instantly training on Venom. The creature only laughed at them before immediately leaping towards their first victim, snapping his neck instantly. The other security people then lit him into them, guns blazing, but the bullets proved to have as little an effect as nerf darts would have. The fusion of symbiote and man tore through the guards one by one, brutally beating, snapping or swatting them away like flies. One guard managed to get in a stab with a long taser, which caused Venom brief aggravation, but still only resulted in the man getting a backhand to the head that resulted in his face ending up looking behind him.

The security finished off, Venom leapt back toward the Big Man, landing right in front of his desk. Throughout the entire affair, the man had simply remained in his seat, cool as could be.

"It took us a great deal of effort to find you," they sneered. "But once we discovered the identity of your second in command, it was only a matter of tracing his movements until he finally led us to you."

Still, the man said nothing.

"You know, we came here to kill you," Venom continued. "But now that we're here, we have a better idea. You see, those in your organization we haven't killed have either disappeared or turned themselves in. So, we think that we'll pay Ryker's Island a visit. We will kill every criminal there, and you will watch your operation crippled before your very eyes. Then, once you have lost the only thing in this world you care about at all, we will come back here, and send you to join them!"

Firing a web, Venom swung off, preparing to end this once and for all.

Finalizing the last little tweaks to his invention, Peter put his tools down, taking the device in his hand.

"Is it ready?" M.J. asked.

"I think so," Peter replied, "but there's only one way to find out."

Pressing the button, the device produced an irritating sound, causing the two of them to grimace before Peter shut it off.

"Yep, definitely works."

"You think that will be enough to stop him?" M.J. questioned.

"It should be," he tried to reassure her. "What is annoying to us is deadly to the symbiote. The trick will be getting close enough."

Peter turned to see that, sure enough, M.J. couldn't look at him anymore.

"Hey," he said, setting the device down and turning towards her. "Talk to me."

M.J. let out a breath, finally turning to look at him again.

"I don't want you to go," she stated. "I know that you have to, that you're probably the only one who can stop him, but after seeing you lying there all week... I just don't like the thought of you swinging off again. I know that makes me selfish, maybe even weak, but..."

"You're not selfish, M.J," Peter reassured her, "and you're definitely not weak. No one can blame you for feeling that way."

M.J. nodded, her eyes starting to fill with water.

"I just don't want to lose you."

Peter said nothing this time, instead wrapping his arms around his fiancé and pulling her close. She returned the gesture, the two of them taking a moment to soak each other in. Peter gave her a firm kiss on the side of her head.

"I can't promise anything for sure," he explained, "except that I'm going to do everything that I can to come back to you."

He could feel her nodding her head against his shoulder.

"Go," she said. "Do what you do best."

"I'll try," he said.

"I love you," she said.

"I love you too," he replied, the two of them finally separating. Before they could say any more, May called for Peter to come to the living room. He and M.J. entered to find another special report, this time from Ryker's prison.

"The creature was seen entering the premises only a few minutes ago," the reporter explained. "Ryker's security officials tried to stop it, but our latest report shows that the creature is moving into the building. Given that this creature had previously targeted those like the people who reside in the prison, the guards and inmates alike will have their hands full to say the least."

Peter turned off the TV.

"He's going to kill them all."

"Gayle..." M.J. muttered under her breath.

Peter quickly made his way back to the bedroom. He'd already put on the rest of his spare suit, so all he needed was to grab his mask, which he promptly did. M.J. and May both followed him there. He slipped his mask on before turning to them.

"Wish me luck," he said.

The women nodded.

"Be careful, please," M.J. said.

Nodding back, Peter turned and leapt out of the building, swinging away. The activity produced some discomfort still, but he couldn't wait any longer. If he did, Venom would likely take everyone in the place out, including M.J.'s sister. He couldn't let that happen, and he couldn't let his friend lose his soul even more.

At least not without a fight.

If you've made it this far, I hope you're still enjoying it! Thanks for the support, as always.

Continuing to pray for you all; stay safe and healthy!

"The earth is the Lord's, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for He founded it on the seas and established it on the waters." Psalm 24:1-2