Things were quiet for a few days. Enough time for me to get used to my new power, and enough time to fully master my Symbiote's powers which... It also seemed a little stronger, but I'm not sure how.
...Well, one thing I was sure of, was that I couldn't take it off anymore. Sometimes, when things got a little much, I'd make it slither off into a corner while I tried to get some sleep. I tried that the first night after the incident with The Consultant and nothing happened. That was... Concerning.
Still, managed to master its full power in just a few nights. I guess peak human learning was faster than I thought... Wonder how long it'd take me to become fluent in twelve languages?
Mostly I was trying to distract myself, because not long after that I got a call from Fisk, whose number was in my new phone as "The Boss," telling me to get to the Club and ask the man at the door for "Mister Masters."
And that was how I found myself sitting in the back of a nondescript black minibus that had been remodeled to sit like a personnel carrier, accompanied by Sandman, The Shocker, The Rhino, Melter, Bullseye, and Taskmaster.
...And Massacre makes seven. So, on the bright side, I wasn't being made to join a Sinister Six lineup.
On the dark side... I was in a van with a guy with vibroshock weapons, a guy with a belt that fired high-intensity microwaves in a focused beam that could melt just about anything from either heat or destabilizing their molecules, a guy who could throw down with the Hulk, a shapeshifter who could produce any melee weapon from his body, one of the world's deadliest assassins, and the greatest non-chi using martial artist in the world. Maybe I was just being paranoid, but I got the feeling that this team was assembled, in part, to deal with me if a felony murder charge wasn't enough to keep me from getting cold feet.
"Gentlemen," Taskmaster began from his seat near the front, "lady," he nodded in my direction. "Fisk has hired us for a one-shot job, but first an introduction. A new face is in the game tonight, Massacre here is a super-solider with a symbiote. She works for Fisk full time and she's joining us tonight to make her bones." Never agreed to that, but it's not like I have a choice right now. "The job is simple and, guess what? We get to be the good guys tonight."
"Does that mean no killing?" Bullseye said, disinterested, as he played with a throwing knife.
"I never said that," Taskmaster replied, "but do keep in mind that this is a professional gig. Keep it clean, people. So, details, I'm sure we've all heard about what happened at this year's Hellfire Gala?"
The response was a chorus of half-interested nods.
"Well, turns out Fisk was there, the whole thing's a lie. ORCHIS poisoned the Krakoan drugs and blackmailed Xavier into forcibly relocating all the mutants himself. Then they killed almost all the human gusts at the gala so there'd be no witnesses." This made Bullseye laugh. "Anyway, the Kingpin is mighty ticked that Typhoid Mary got lost in the chaos, so he wants to hit ORCHIS where it hurts: Their wallets."
He pulled several sheets of paper out of a briefcase and started passing them around, turned out to be a small dossier with a map, basic information, that sort of thing.
"Since I know that half of you aren't going to read that," Taskmaster continued, "the target is a laboratory in Brooklyn where scientists are developing 'safe' alternatives for the Krakoan drugs. Officially, ORCHIS is just funding the lab and providing security, but according to Fisk's sources the scientists are directly on their payroll. Our job is to bust in, destroy their research, and cause a bunch of property damage. If we find any evidence of their crimes, we get a bonus. At this time of night, there should only be a few security guards, who are all ORCHIS personnel. Use your best judgment if you run into them, but they all know what they're in for so if any of you tend to get squeamish, well, don't worry about it."
...This was payback, wasn't it? I threatened Fisk and now he was going to implicate me in as many homicides as he could so that he could have my ass nailed to a wall if he decided I wasn't worth using.
The van slowed to a stop. "Okay, so final details, Sandman comes in from the roof, Rhino makes an entrance on the ground floor for the rest of us, once we're inside, split off and do your own thing...Except you, Massacre. You're new to this, so stick close to me."
One overly large Russian man crashing through a wall later and we were inside.
"...Shouldn't there have been an alarm?" I asked. "I feel like that entrance was something that would have set off an alarm."
"Don't think about it too hard," Taskmaster said tersely. "Now come on."
He made me follow him on a rather circuitous route through the building. Upstairs, downstairs, through long halls, checking rooms with no rhyme or reason. Sometimes he'd stop and fiddle with some device he'd pull from the pouches in his belt. I dared not ask. Instead, I kept a lookout, with my enhanced senses and those of my symbiote, in case anyone was coming. I heard a sizzling sound off in the distance and... So apparently Melter had bonded to a symbiote at some point. He had a very minor codex and I could feel it from the same general area as the sizzling. I was trying very hard not to think about what he'd melted.
After about twenty minutes of twisting, turning, and occasional backtracking we came across a corpse that, based on the blood splatter, had been killed by something sharp being thrown at him from far away with enough speed and precious to slash his throat clean open and then, judging by the hole in the wall, embedded in the wall across from him.
"I told him to be clean about it," Taskmaster said bitterly. "Okay, try not to step in the blood."
I looked at the body. "He doesn't look like an ORCHIs Soldier. Don't they wear AIM-style beekeeper-type suits in red with that flower symbol?"
"The grunts working security are plain clothes, don't worry about it," Taskmaster dismissed. This whole thing seemed fishy to me, but I wasn't exactly in a position to question it right now.
A few minutes later, however, I noticed something. "Someone just came into the building through the roof."
"How do you know that?" Taskmaster asked, suspiciously.
"They have a codex." Maybe two? If they had two they were from very closely related symbiotes.
"A what?"
"They've been bonded to a symbiote. My symbiote can sense the remnants left behind."
"Ah... Well, since you know where they are, why don't you go investigate?"
I wanted to object but any dissent would probably be reported right back to Fisk, so off I marched, in the direction they seemed to be heading as well.
A few flights of stairs up, I stumbled across another one of Bullseye's victims. This one looked like he'd caught it in the gut. I feel like I was getting desensitized to this kind of thing a bit too fast. I paused, just to take it in... And the codex host came around the corner.
Spider-Man, the one with the black and red costume, looked at me. Then to the corpse that I was standing over. Then back to me.
"...This isn't what it looks like." I defended lamely. The lightning that crackled along his clenched fist as he exploded forward told me that he didn't believe me.
I was able to dodge the first electro-punch and the second but by the third, I was backed into the proverbial corner. I didn't want to fight a Spider-Man. I didn't want to hurt a Spider-Man, but...
I didn't have room to dodge the third punch, my back was to a window. He hit me square and the sound of shattered glass was the last thing I heard before everything went white.
The next thing I knew, everything was pain. My arms and legs, my real ones that was, were bent awkwardly and I couldn't move them... It felt... It felt like all of my bones were the wrong shape and I could feel them trying to straighten out and it fucking hurt.
Okay, assess the situation... I was outside, on the ground, in terrible pain... And my symbiote was still here, but... All of its senses were cut off. I tried to make it move, tried to make it move for me, but I could barely get it to respond.
Between it and my own broken body, I had just enough range of movement to turn my head and see the rest of the team loading back up into the van. Taskmaster looked directly at me before getting in himself. Shortly afterward, the getaway vehicle sped off without me.
So... Basically I was sitting there helpless until my fancy new healing factor fixed me up enough to get up and walk away... Except I was just present for a crime where people were killed and 'fought' a Spider-Man, so being a sitting duck in plain sight ended with me in the Raft.
A moment's effort and all the willpower I could muster let me force-activate my symbiote camouflage, right in the nick of time as Spider-Man landed not far from me and began looking around. He got uncomfortably close to where I was lying before deciding that nothing was there and zipping off on a web line.
After a few moments, I was healed enough to stand and began stumbling, invisibly, toward the nearest sewer entrance so that I could return to my abandoned supervillain lair and sleep this night off like a bad hangover.
No sooner, however, had I made it into New York City's sprawling and surprisingly roomy sewer system and dropped my camo that my legs gave out on me and I collapsed against a wall. I tried prodding a reaction, any reaction, out of the symbiote. Eventually, I got a vague memory of Carnage having gained a serious weakness to electrical attacks when he was revived with something called the Grendel. Would have been nice to know that earlier.
A strange tingle from somewhere in my body alerted me to the fact that my phone was ringing. I elected to not wonder how it'd survived the lightning blast and the several-story fall and instead focused on making my symbiote spit it up from wherever my pocket contents went when I was in full alien costume mode.
The call was from "Boss."
"Massacre here, Mister Fisk."
"Just checking in," he said with faux politeness. "I found myself concerned when Mister Masters informed me you had been separated from the team during the job."
"Spider-Man showed up, I got knocked out of a window, and they left me for dead," I explained bluntly.
"Ahh, yes. About what I expected."
"Probably gonna need to take a personal day to fully recover."
"Of course. Take all the time you need, Maria."
He hung up after that, and the only response I could make at that point was "Well shit."