Alchemax was founded when Allan Chemical merged with Oscorp... Though apparently there was a recently founded, separate Oscorp now? Figure that out.
According to President and CEO Liz Allan, Alchemax's goals were to provide efficient and affordable agricultural, transportation, health and medicine, and personal care products. But a few years back there was a scandal when it turned out that their genetics division was illegally cloning X-23 and abusing the clones for militarization purposes, rumor had it that they'd inadvertently poisoned the water of a town and then dodged responsibility, and they're the beneficiaries of a hastily approved and blatantly unconstitutional bill granting them inherent ownership of all 'nonhuman matter' following the backlash against aliens after Knull's invasion, they'd been sending their 'Guardsmen' out to violently and forcibly capture symbiotes no matter who is bonded to them or how benign.
So, yeah. Either Allan is lying or she's asleep at the wheel.
There was something in the former Oscorp tower that was calling to me. It had been ever since I realized I needed to make my symbiote stronger. Ever since I realized that I needed to shore up its weaknesses in order to be safe.
Scaling the side of the tower in the dead of night, a razor-sharp claw cut me a way in through a window. I could feel it, there were a lot of symbiotes in this building. Mostly on this floor, though one seemed to be loose in the walls and ductwork and the real prize was elsewhere, but this was where I needed to start.
Wandering around, invisible of course, it became readily apparent that this was their xeno-biology floor. Eventually, I found what seemed to be a promising door. The lock was electronic, opened by a keycard, but an endo-sym tendril let me interface with the circuitry. and hack it open, revealing a laboratory.
Rows and rows of glass cylinders, each holding a symbiote. This close I could feel them through the hive, their stories... Some were kin to my symbiote half, like Riot, Phage, Lasher, and Agony who I recognized as I passed. Others were copycats, clones of other symbiotes like Scream or Toxin, or cocktails made from cutoffs of multiple symbiotes. A few were even unrelated to my lineage, stragglers left behind after the defeat of the King in Black.
Alchemax was researching the symbiotes. Trying to monetize them, weaponize them. Oh, they'd backed off a little bit very recently, but the kinds of tests they had been doing, so my siblings said, were inhumane. And that's just what they were doing to the symbiotes. The Toxin clone had things to say about what its original self and its latest host had discovered involving the Brood and non-consensual organ grafts.
Of course, I wasn't here to help them. I had no way of caring for them and, well, you know what they say on airplanes about putting on your oxygen mask first before helping others with theirs.
I strolled past, making note of what had looked like a monkey habitat that had recently been broken out of, before striding up to a needlessly large computer terminal and interfacing with it, though manipulating something this complex needed my full concentration so I had to drop the camo.
Essentially, it mostly just confirmed what I'd learned from the hive, but it also made mention of fragments of the 'Carnage strain' and how it was best for weaponization but couldn't be controlled easily. How combining it with Anti-Venom seemed to make it easier to work with but one needed a strong-willed and aggressive host to keep the two strains from destroying each other. Just what the fuck was their endgame?
Eventually, I was able to figure out how they collected samples from the symbiotes and how to make the machines do it... To tell you the truth, I only really needed a sample of Scream to make this work but her siblings had all evolved since Deadpool had had them and when was I ever going to get a chance to get a piece of Toxin again?
I felt a small twinge of guilt as I sensed the discomfort of the symbiotes in question through the hive, but it was only brief. As I strutted across the lab to grab the glass canister the samples had been deposited in, I noticed a rather portly African-American gentleman sitting in a motorized wheelchair.
I looked a him. He looked at me.
"I'm sorry, were you here the entire time?" I asked. "Because I'm not sure how I could have overlooked you?"
"Oh, don't worry, I'm very easy to overlook," the man replied without actually answering my question.
More awkward silence. I gestured to the canister. "I'm just gonna..."
"I'm afraid I can't let you do that," he replied.
I responded by launching a tendril out to grab the canister and pull it toward me. "Your permission was never part of the equation, mister..."
"Steven," he replied. "Doctor Steven. Former head of astro-biological studies, current head of the symbiote division of xeno-biological studies."
"So was that guy you stuffed full of vivisected Brood organs on you?" I replied.
He seemed shocked, and a little hurt. "I am not responsible for the actions of my colleagues, particularly when they act beyond their department or go off the reservation," he responded. It sounded like he said that a lot.
"Keep telling yourself that." I opened the canister and grabbed the symbiote samples. Crushing them in my hands...
It was different from consuming a codex... Like, there were still memories and stuff, but it was more like what my symbiote had when I first gained it. Just a recording of information from its progenitor and what it had picked up from his hive. Codices had like... Echoes of will, of the personality of the host and symbiote. A lot more veins of color flowed through me than when I just absorbed a codex, too, but in the end, it passed all the same and I adapted to that power and...
My symbiote form had hair now. Like, if you took my normal haircut, dyed it blood red with black highlights, and then extended it past my shoulders. But it was still made of symbiote goo, so like... It responded, a lock of it standing up on edge... Scream. This came from Scream and it was weird. Whatever, I'd get used to it.
"Well, Doctor Steven, it's been fun, but I must get going," I said with a shrug. "Places to be, things to steal, you know how it is."
"Probably for the best," he acknowledged, "if you didn't leave soon I would have had to call security."
I narrowed my eyes a him. "You're awfully calm about talking to a symbiote-host like that."
He shrugged. "You symbiote is clearly a Carnage strain. A clone or an offshoot. Carnage strains react best to aggression and are rather difficult to control. While there is no doubt in my mind that if you were so inclined you could tear me limb from limb in a heartbeat... If you were so inclined, you would have done it already. You're in full control of the symbiote, and have enough control of your own aggression not to indulge in pointless violence even if you fantasize about it."
"I don't fantasize about violence," I quipped back.
"Keep telling yourself that."
I turned to leave but could see him pull a cell phone with the proverbial eyes in the back of my head.
At this point, I decided that stealth wasn't an option anymore, so I just openly strutted in the direction of the nearest elevator, singing to myself the while. I didn't really feel like singing, mind you, but I was going to run into security at some point and it was good to make an impression.
"Da da, da de da, dum dum da de da dum da de da..."
I made it to the elevators just in time for them to open and a platoon of goons in green Guardsmen Armor. By then I'd finished Bloody Mary and moved on to Living Dead Girl.
I continued to sing/hum to myself as I danced around their initial attacks. Stun batons, like what he guards at Ravencroft had but more heavy-duty looking. Just for the hell of it, I blatantly let one of them hit me just to see their body language when the shock had no effect. Then I tossed them over my shoulder back down the hall. They'd be fine, those things were basically discount Iron Man suits.
The rest switched out the batons, trading them for powered armor-augmented martial arts. At this point, I switched to blocking and parrying rather than dodging just to drive home how little a threat they were to me.
Two of them that had stayed back pulled out large capsules of some white goo and crushed them and were engulfed in Anti-Venom suits that interfaced with their armors. The rest backed off while those two rushed me. I affixed myself to the ground and tanked their tackles. The 'super-venom' I got from Freak inoculated me from being burned by their suits and even with symbiote-enhanced armor, I was stronger than they were.
"Oh dear," I mocked. "How did you ever realize that I was weak to hugs?" I then manifested a long scorpion-like tail, secreting the tiniest drop of super-venom onto each of them, dissolving their anti-venom suits.
"Are we done now, gentlemen? I really don't want to hurt you but I will if you don't get out of my way."
This did not get the reaction I'd hoped for. Instead, they all simply returned to engaging me with martial arts. From the proverbial eyes in the back of my head, however, I saw someone come around a corner and approach. They had unique armor and carried a high-tech-looking spear. Unfortunately for him, the symbiotes here knew what that spear was.
I pretended that I didn't notice anything, until the spear, activated and letting off a frequency that should have played sweet holy havoc with any symbiote struck me between the shoulders to no effect. I twisted around to look at the spearman.
"Starktech, son," I said. "It's hardened against sonic weaponry." I held out a palm to him with a glowing red repulsor node manifested. "Are you hardened against repulsor blasts?" The Spearman stood down. "Good boy."
"Now, does anyone else still want a piece of me? Because I can guarantee that what I want will cost the company less than your hospital bills if I have to get serious."
"We're insured," one spat out.
"There would also be significant property damage. Seriously, if your job is to protect the company's assets, they lose out the least if you just let me have what I'm after. Or I could just start breaking bones, your choice."
That seemed to do the trick. Unhindered, I made my way to the elevator, forced the door, and slithered in slime from down the shaft till I passed the car. Then I freefell down to the deepest basement.
Down here... here was the real prize. The piece of Scream was just the last thing I needed to get it.
I happily danced my way to an unassuming patch of concrete on the floor, then projectile vomited some of Agony's metabolic acid all over it melting down a few feet. Two strong tendrils based on Lasher and Riot pulled the solid adamantium cube out of the hole.
Scream, as I'd learned through the hive, had once developed a peculiar power, a 'sonic knife,' that her first host had used to kill the hosts of her siblings in a fit of madness. A bladed weapon that vibrated at a high frequency, somehow being able to take advantage of a symbiote's weakness to sonics without triggering it in Scream herself.
That, combined with a large serrated blade based on what I'd gained from Phage and the ability to mimic vibranium from Dr. Malus let me carve cleanly through the box to pull out a large glass containment jar.
And within that, alive but inert, with no mind but plenty of instinct, was the last known extant piece of the orignal Carnage symbiote.
This close, I could read the whole story. It was like the consultant said. Norman Osborn had gotten his hands on the Carnage symbiote and dosed it with the Goblin formula, not only purging it of its weakness to fire and sonics but making it immune to them and electricity too. Not to mention the incredible jump in power and unprecedented new abilities it received. The main body of the symbiote was eventually destroyed, of course, but before that Osborn spread this offshoot to his grandson. Ms. Allan had it extracted, then sealed away the record until it started calling to me and my connection to the Hive led my subconscious to the answers of how to get to it.
All I needed to do was open this jar and... Someone else was here.
"Come out, I know you're there..." I probed the Hive. "Misery, is it?"
From around a set of shelves meant for storing something or other, Alchemax CEO Liz Allan stepped out.
"Well well well, if it isn't corporate hypocrisy," I quipped. "Come on, Ms. Allan. You've seen mine, it's only fair that I get to see yours."
She glared but then shifted into symbiote form. The best way I could describe it was 'Milf by way of H.R. Geiger.' The symbiote hugged her body and accentuated her curves in burgundy with white spirals and tiger stripes... But her face was stereotypical symbiote face and four-bladed appendages hung around her back.
"You need to put that down," Misery insisted. "You have no idea what it is you're dealing with."
"The funny thing is, you think you have any right to tell me what to do," I replied. "How many atrocities has your company committed? You're the CEO, the president, and the founder. You have to know about it... And yet, you put on the costume made of murder goo and get to pretend to be a hero because you've thrown down with someone worse? You've got no moral high ground here, and as for the risks." I smashed open the jar and let the portion of Carnage unify with the Carnage that was Massacre, "I think I'm well informed and prepared."
I'd already more than acclimated to Carnage's madness. After that, and after Freak's drug-addled mind, Osborn's murderous insanity was small potatoes. The last bit of Carnage, or should I say the first Red Gobin, had had plenty of time to acclimate to the goblin formula, limiting the side effects I'd been warned about by The Consultant. Meanwhile, Freak's adaptive healing meant that my body quickly adapted to whatever side effects remained.
I exhaled a small jet of red-hot flame and sulfurous fumes as I finished assimilating my grand prize. Once I'd fully adjusted to it, it was strange just how... Amazing that power felt.
Misery lept for me, clearly deciding that the time for talk was over. Once she got into attack range, I bopped her with the Venom-Strike I'd gotten from Miles's codex, which reversed her momentum enough to send her back a few feet to the ground.
"You're not the Queen Symbiote Bitch here, Misery," I boasted. "I am. You're wearing a Carnage strain, just like me, meaning that electricity fucks you up but unlike me you never looked for any way of compensating." Now I lowballed the bio-electric shock on that attack, so the Misery symbiote shouldn't be badly messed up like after my first fight with Miles... Unlike My Symbiote or the Anti-Venom suits from earlier, Misery had a mind of its own, but it still should be incapacitated for a bit. "Now you'd best start showing a bit of fielty, or else I might decide to start testing my limits on the only available dummy."
I was bluffing of course, but she had no way of knowing that and—a wall burst open and I a suddenly tackled by something small but angry. As I adjusted to the suddenness of it I realized that I had just been attacked by the loose symbiote I'd sensed in the ductwork earlier.
Getting a look, I saw a simian figure similar to Misery, a sort of Proto-Misery maybe? It was wearing some kind of electronic speech device around its neck.
"Elizabeth Allan is not yours to kill," it said. "You will not deny me my revenge."
...You know what, to hell with it. I ran it clean through with my oversized Sonic Blade and then I pulled, attempting to consume the proto-Misery entirely and... simian bones clattered to the ground as the memories of the host filtered into my mind.
That had been an actual chimp. Her name had been Grace, and she'd suffered inhumane treatment as part of the attempts to weaponize Carnage by combining it with Anti-Venom.
I felt bad now.
"I... I'm just going to leave now," I said aloud although I wasn't sure, nor did I care, whether or not Misery was listening. I took one step, then doubled over. I fell to my knees as my legs gave out and my symbiote-infused flesh began to boil...The Anti-Venom from Grace's symbiote, it... Wasn't staying down, so to speak, and... Thoughts and feelings were flashing through my mind, most of them not mine but...
Everything went red and I felt like I was exploding. When the haze cleared, I felt small and weak, and... Misery and I weren't alone anymore.