A number of the long-term patients and staff of the Ravencroft Institute for The Criminally Insane had been infected by symbiotes or offshoots of symbiotes over the years, but I was really only here for two.
Honestly, even with the complete remodel this place had undergone after Carnage's attack a little bit ago, just being here gave me the creeps. The history of this place came up a few times in my true crime podcasts and I'd done some of my own research on the matter as well. Back when Europeans first settled the area, the natives warned them away from the land that Ravencroft was built on with stories of cannibals who preyed indiscriminately on anyone who entered their territory. A group of settlers going missing and turning up as a pile of dismembered limbs laid out in a spiral told them the truth of the matter.
As an aside, according to my inherited symbiote memories, those cannibals were a cult of Knull.
The first serial killer in American history, Cortland Kassady, went on his spree after getting lost out here and was incarcerated in a cell built on what are now the exact grounds of the asylum. Supposedly he was buried here, too. If the name sounds familiar, it should. The history of madness and violence has been passed down from father and son in the Kassady line until Cletus Kassay, alias Carnage, picked up where his many greats granddad left off. Cletus himself was literally born here when his mother was incarcerated for something or other.
What else... One of the bloodiest battles of the Revolutionary War was fought on these grounds, rumors exist that The Legend of Sleepy Hollow was based loosely on stories of a Ghost Rider who was born on these grounds, a cult of Shuma-Gorath tried to summon their god here, and when the Institute was being built one of the workers murdered the foreman because Mephisto told him to. Finally, back during WWII, government-sanctioned scientists did something to the patients that made the founder of the asylum kill the scientists and then himself. Rumor has it that it had something to do with the vampires who took over the facility not long after Carnage had his way with it.
I digress. the point was, that there was a lot of blood and bad juju in this place and it was probably haunted. Stalking the halls of the place, trying to pick out the specific targets I was after among a sea of people with two or three codices a piece, a strong chill went down my spine. Coming here on the night of the full moon of all nights especially was a mistake.
Still, I'd taken the time to come out to Westchester for this. I was committed at this point.
The truth was, I didn't sense these people through the Hivemind. One of them, I knew about because he was infected by a doppelganger, just like my symbiote, around the same time and I got confirmation of who he was from Deadpool's codices.
The other I knew about because he was a former host of Carnage. So I was going mostly on inherited memories and what I could learn from ten minutes of googling at a public library's computer terminals, not what they felt like in the Hive Mind, which made them a bit hard to find.
They were going to be very useful codices to take, but I needed to actually be able to get out here to find them. The thing about an Iron Man suit? They can fly. Don't know how long it would have taken me to get to Westchester on foot but I know how long I was willing to try. Turns out, not long.
One of them, a patient, was a priority, but he was a pain and a half to find with so many other codices distracting me and it wasn't like I could just glut myself on them right now... Oh, hell, that was interesting... Might have to come back here a little later. But first... Aha, there we go.
I stood invisibly before a cell in which a large man lay sleeping. This close to him, it was trivially easy to read his codex specifically. Freak. A meth-addicted vagrant who broke into a laboratory where Doctor Curtis 'The Lizard' Connors was doing research. Freak here ate a whole bunch of stuff. Stem cells, bio-samples from various animals, mutagens, and other chemicals and it all combined in his system to result in regenerative immortality. Hurt him, he heals back stronger and resistant to the source of harm. Poison or infect him with something and his immune system will respond with a perfect antibody while his metabolism adapts to flush it out. Kill him? If there's anything left his body will form a chrysalis that'll bring him back to life even stronger. He used to look like a monster, but at some point, it seems he adapted to even out.
Sounds cool, right? And it is, don't get me wrong... But that's not why I want his codex. See, I'm already pretty badass when it comes to regen, and symbiotes do adapt over time and in response to stressors. After, after what happened with the venom virus I suspected that I could come back from as little as one cell, not that I was really interested in trying...
But Freak's Carnage-Doppelganger had noticed something interesting when it bonded to him, which got disseminated through Carnage's mini-hive and, eventually, to me: It wasn't the first time that he'd been exposed to symbiotes. The details were vague, he wasn't exactly conscious at the time, but at some point, a sample of the original Anti-Venom symbiote was injected into him and started reverting his mutations. His power responded by creating this substance that... Like, a super-concentrated living abyss saturated with every disease and toxin he'd ever been exposed to, which for some reason was a lot. Burned the Anti-Venom right out of his system, and that was something I'd need if I was going for the big prize.
Now, there wasn't a readily apparent way for me to open his cell door, which... I'd been putting off trying this. I wasn't just wearing a symbiote anymore, I was the symbiote. So, with my shapeshifting I... should be able to...
It took surprisingly little effort to liquify my body and slither through the bars, reforming on the other side. I'd had to drop my camo to do it, but I was able to get it back up just before a night guard on his rounds came around the corner. I waited for five minutes after he passed, sighed at the reminder of my lost humanity, and then turned to Freak.
Something that hadn't initially occurred to me when I went after the Endo-Sym? Nanomachines meant nano-scale control of my mass. I produced a long, thin, and very very sharp needle from my palm. Now, when I harvested a codex from someone's spine, it would be less like being stabbed in the back and more like a spinal tap. For someone like Freak, he'd barely feel it.
Luckily, he slept on his front. It was easy enough to slide the needle in between his vertebrae and spread on microscopic tendrils of my mass to interface with the Living Abyss in his system and then slurp it all up and...
Ah, jeez. Okay, going after the mentally ill former drug addict was probably a bad idea. Those memories are probably gonna take a bit to process but... Yeah, there we go. I could feel my body's internal structures shifting to replicate some of Freak's adaptations already and... Yeah, yeah. traces of some kind of 'super venom' were flowing through my veins.
Freak grunted in his sleep as I pulled out the needle and oozed my way back out of the cell. This time, however, a patrolling guard caught me as I was reforming. He looked at me, I looked at him. He reached for his radio. I bolted.
Stealth wasn't an option anymore, so I just sprinted or the Institute's medical wing, my second target would be there. Easier to find, too. My symbiote had been more familiar with its progenitor's hosts than its siblings, and there was something unique about the good doctor's codex that made it easy to figure out where it was compared to the other rabble.
Unfortunately, the facility was now on alert, with guards moving about. About five of them were blocking the hall in front of me. I stopped.
"Okay," I began, "I'm not here to hurt anybody and whatever you're getting paid isn't enough to throw down with me. Just step aside and nobody has to get hurt."
"We take our jobs very seriously, Miss," one of them said as they drew out rods that... Yeah, those were basically cattle prods. Part of me wanted to say that there was no reason to have those at a place meant to treat people whose illness made them a danger to themselves and others, but they kept supervillains here so maybe sometimes a regular taser wasn't enough during a riot. The guard's form earlier didn't have those either, those might just be for me.
"You know you can't win, right?" I said trying to dissuade them.
"We don't have to win, we just have to keep you busy till Captain Jameson gets here," was the reply. Why did that name sound familiar?
I sighed. "Fine. don't worry. I'll be gentle."
I dived to the floor, slid, and spun, sweeping my leg into the legs of one of the guards and knocking him to the floor. Leaping upward I poked another in the solar plexus, which with my superhuman strength might as well have been a punch. A third I grabbed by the forearm as he tried to jab me with his prod and then jerked upward, flipping him over my back and to the floor. The fourth I struck in the shin with the back of my heel throwing off his balance and making him tumble. The fifth I just kneed in the groin.
"Please stay down," I said, "You're all probably good honest people who are just doing your jobs, I just want to get what I'm here for and then get out and—what smells like dog?"
I saw him with my symbiote senses, my proverbial eyes in the back of my head. And sensed his codices through the hivemind as well, and realized in shock why the name Captain Jameson sounded so familiar.
Really shouldn't have done this on the night of the full moon.
The surprise of it all meant that I didn't think to dodge as the Man-Wolf tackled me to the ground, but I quickly got my bearings about me. Man-Wolf was strong, but I was stronger. Man-Wolf was fast but I was faster. Also, I could sprout two extra pairs of arms. It didn't take long for me to turn the tables and wrestle him into submission.
I hadn't really gotten much chance to use the more spider-derived abilities that I'd inherited from Carnage, mostly because he never used them, but webbing Man-Wolf to the ground seemed like a good idea.
I could have taken his codex... But at this point it didn't really give me anything that I didn't already have and I was more concerned with shoring up my weaknesses than grabbing raw power right now. Maybe I'd come back for it later.
No other guards tried to stop me, despite my passing a few, as I made my way to the office of Dr. Karlin Malus. A scientist who studied superpowers, he'd invented the Power Broker treatment and a few other means of granting powers to the common man. He served as the host of the Carnage symbiote for a while while Cletus was recovering from a lobotomy, then the symbiote turned around and ate him. Somehow he lived through that and used what he'd learned from the experience to turn himself into a human-symbiote hybrid, a sort of prototype for me if you will albeit by a different method, but that's not why I was here.
See, what I inherited from my Carnage memories told me that, while he was the 'Superior Carnage,' he'd managed to make the symbiote absorb a sample of pure Wakandan vibranium and disperse the element through its molecular structure, bonding to it and replicate its properties. The Symbiote was destroyed and regenerated from another sample soon after, one that didn't have that property, but Malus's codex still vibrated at a strange frequency to others.
Wankanda went to great lengths to prevent knowledge of the properties of vibranium from becoming mainstream, but I was pretty sure that its chemical symbol was "Bs." Best-case scenario, I was one of the most efficient conductors on the plant and stored quite a lot of energy, so it'd make for a decent stop-gap measure until I could get a power source for the Endo-Sym. Worst case scenario, it'd improve my defensive abilities, and being able to make vibranium-infused knives whenever I wanted would be pretty cool. Besides, I had a gut feeling that I'd need something really sharp sooner or later.
Malus was waiting for me, sitting in the wheelchair that he really didn't need anymore, seemingly perfectly calm despite the circumstances.
"A fascinating thing I've discovered about the symbiotes," he said, "the remnants they leave behind... They lack true sentience, but they possess a will, one that can be sensed if you're in tune enough with the void. The remnants of Carnage in my spine... They yearn to be part of something greater once again. they knew you were coming, they knew what you are."
Well, that was concerning. "And how do you feel about that?"
"I have what I need from the symbiotes, I have no need to keep the remnants of a parasite now that I possess my own powers," he said, "though I do find myself curious... You may take my remnants, if I may have a sample of your symbiote for my research."
Yeah, there's no way that wouldn't come back to bite me in the ass. "No deal."
He stood from his chair and tore off his lab coat, his flesh turning reddish and his mouth contorting into fangs "Then we are at an impasse."
He lept for me, hands extending into claws. I grabbed him by the ankle mid-jump with a tendril and slammed him into the ground a few times. He was part symbiote, he could handle it.
"How?" he begged through a face full of floor.
"I'm the new hotness and I was merged with the abyss using better stuff," I replied as I bent down to jab my needle through his spine. "You meanwhile, are a jury-rigged patchjob made with the old busted model. Sucks to suck, don't it?" I mocked as I got what I needed and prepared to retreat. "I mean, really? You're no High Evolutionary, you're no Arnim Zola, and you're certainly no Mister Sinister. So from now on, why don't you stay in your lane when it comes to super genetics and stick to giving wannabe wrestlers super strength."
There was a window in the office, so I just busted through it and took off into the night.