As I pushed myself up from the floor I took in the visage of several figures.

One, the ape I just ate. Next to it was a tall, demonic-looking goblin with fumes and smoke streaming from its mouth. Another was a black and red six-armed Spider-Man who looked ready to make me catch his red hands. A third was a hulking figure in dark green with the mandibles, claws, and tail of a scorpion. An armored figure in red with a wicked-looking curved blade for an arm, another brute, this time blood red and clawed, the Endo-Sym Armor standing on its own, and finally a bizarre, monstrous version of Deadpool with grey, green, pink, and yellow limbs.

All of them had veins of red streaking through them, and all of them seemed quite intent on inflicting violence upon me. And I could feel it in my bones that I didn't have any of the power I'd gotten from them.

Spider-Man was the first, rushing me with electrified fists. I was fast, but he was faster. Everything went white again and when the searing pain cleared enough to think straight he had me by the throat up against a wall.

"You're a hypocrite, you know that?" He says. "You criticize others for dodging responsibility for the suffering their actions cause, but... What was it you told me? That you never killed anyone? That it was Bullseye who killed those people? But that whole gig was Fisk testing you, or punishing you for ticking him off... Those people are dead because of you and you know it. Why aren't you taking responsibility?"

He dropped me after that. I tried to crawl away but was met by a sudden sharp pain in my shoulder. His face had turned into a spiral over a fanged maw and he'd bitten down on me hard.

As he was chewing on me, the Deadpool-Hybrid saddled up. "You know, you Mary-Sue edge lord Bitch... You could have come to plenty of people. They could have helped you get rid of the symbiote, or use its power if you wanted to keep it. The Avengers have a hotline, Spider-Man's not hard to find, hell you probably could have just thought about it hard enough and his Majesty King Eddie would have been down to help you and your other in a heartbeat. Could even have come to Monster Island, I'd have helped you. You had options, but you chose to hide in the sewers until the latest #BigThing scared you enough to seek help getting stronger... And you turn to the Kingpin of Crime, of all people. Why?"

His face doesn't need to change. All he needs to do to chomp down on my other shoulder is to lift me up for access, which the Spider-Man Symbiote is more than willing to help him with.

Freak and Scorpion grabbed my legs. "Jamming a needle in a recovering addict? Not cool."

"You just walk in, demand everyone's attention, pick a fight just for the hell of it... What the hell is wrong with you?"

Then two fanged mouths tore into my shins.

The Red Goblin came up behind Spider-Man. "You've got so much pain and darkness in you," he said as he took my arm, "and you keep adding more. What made you think taking in mine was a good idea?" Then he started going at my forearm like corn on the cob.

The Endo-Sym didn't even ask a question before it mirrored him.

I couldn't respond. Their questions cut to the bone and being the victim in every zombie movie ever fucking hurt. I couldn't even work up the nerve to tell them to choke on it.

The Superior Carnage kneeled by my head. He took my skull in his hands and held it up steady as the chimp crawled up over me to look me in the eye. "You killed me," she said. "Who gave you the right?"

Something in the back of my head clicked. As the ape opened her maw to bite down on my head, I mustered my strength and headbutted her.

"You're not real," I said through gritted teeth. A bit of trivia I picked up somewhere? While you occasionally get the rare superintelligent gorilla or something, no ordinary primate that's been given a way to communicate has ever asked a question. "None of this is real. You're all just... It's so fucking obvious, none of you are acting like the people I got those codices from," I said as I began to struggle.

"The Anti-Venom in that chimp, it threw my symbiote off balance... It must have... You're just my subconscious given form by the powers I've taken into myself!"

I exploded into a mass of tendrils that threw my assailants off of me and stood to my full height, the damage done to me quickly regenerating.

I looked at the Spider-Man copy as it was the first to stand back to its feet. "...You're right," I said. "I am a hyprocrite... But the one big difference? They're in a position to control the actions of others. I'm not. Part of me felt so guilty about it, so scared at the consequences but... I am not Fisk. I'm not Bullseye. I'm not Underworld. They made their choices, I made mine. And I'll live and die by the consequences."

I charged the copy and drove my fist clean through it. "So thank you, Miles," I said as I reabsorbed that portion of my symbiote, the Spider-Man Codex, "for helping test my convictions."

I started laughing "And while I'm being honest with myself, Doctor Steven was right, too... I'll admit it... That was fun. Fighting is fun. Kicking ass is fun, get stronger is fun... I had no reason to just pick a fight with the Scorpion," I said, eying that manifested codex. "Except that I wanted to," I said as I leaped for it, sinking my fangs into its throat and swallowing it whole. I didn't just fantasize about violence, I loved it.

My eyes settled on the Deadpool Codex as I rocked and twisted around for my next target. "...You... You're harder to come up with an answer for... I said it was about safety, about getting strong enough to protect myself... But I just kept putting myself in more danger..." I laughed. "Danger... My first instinct to real danger was to walk up to it and stab it in the fucking neck." Like I was right now, sending a bladed tendril to spear through the Deadpool Codex's throat. As I reeled it in like a fish. "If I had to say though... It was about control and freedom. I went with what the system and society say you should do in a situation like this, didn't pan out in the face of chaos. I wanted to be on my own, make my own choices, and when that didn't work I went for what I felt I could most easily get out of."

As the codex made contact with my arm, I reformed it into a blade and jammed it through the Red Goblin symbiote. "I'd already dealt with the memories of Carnage," I said, "compared to that, the madness and sins of a petty little shitstain like Norman Osborn are nothing. No one but Osborn could be brought down by that. You're a power-up, granting me strength and patching gaps in my armor. Nothing more." Osborn and the rest of Deadpool were sucked into me like an extra-thick milkshake through a straw.

I turned and marched to the chimp. "Who gave me the right? I did," I said before stomping through its torso. She dissolved into symbiote goo and was absorbed through my ankle. "I just explained this to Misery. I'm Queen-Bitch here! Me! I'm the Queen!" I turned to the three remaining codices. Freak, Superior Carnage, and the Endo-Sym. "Now bend the knee!"

Oh, they knelt alright. And then dissolved into symbiotic alien slime that flowed towards me, as did the blood that was spilled during my little dawn of the dead impression. soon enough every single trace of me was back when it belonged, and I felt stronger than ever before, even as my body continued to change. I dropped the arachnoid look, the carapace was getting old. So from the jawline down I was just a generic symbiote costume now, which was fine. I'd gotten some pretty fab abs from the super soldier treatment and the spider-armor was not showing them off.

My head was different. No fanged maw, no spider-dome, no alien mask. In my mind's eye, I saw my own face, but prettied up just a touch, and just a shade paler. My green eyes became blood red in seas of blackest pitch, and faint veins of black and red could be seen just under the surface. As I smiled, I felt that my teeth were now a bit sharper and a bit pointier. A suitable face, framed by long, glorious red hair.

Maria Marshal was dead. My name was Massacre, I was a monster, and I was okay with that.

I was about to turn to leave when I heard slow, lose-handed, slightly sarcastic clapping from behind me.

I turned and suddenly I wasn't in the deepest sub-basement of the Alchemax building. I was back in that same black void with red lighting as I'd been when my body reacted to the Venom virus.

Standing across from me, dressed in jeans and a rictus grin, was a man with mad eyes and wild red hair.

"Gotta say," he said in a somewhat high-pitched voice marked by an obviously fake Southern accent, "I've been watching you for a bit now. Even gave you a little nudge here and there to see how you'd act. Gotta say I was a little disappointed by how wishy-washy you were goin' about things, but that there? You're starting to pull it around. Good start, good start."

I just stared. This was... Honestly, the last thing I expected to happen when I got out of bed today.

The man realized that I wasn't reacting. "...You know who I am, right?"

It took me a moment to respond. "...Cletus Kassady. Carnage."

"There you go. Was gettin' a bit worried for a moment, but the long shadow I cast is still there I see."

"Oh, trust me, I'll never forget who you are," I replied. This is the bastard that killed my parents.

"Sweetheart, I killed a lot of people," he said. "That whole mess with Knull was just a Tuesday to me."

"It was a Wednesday you son of a... Wait..."

Kassady laughed. "We're not in physical space right now, kid. We're in the Hive. The collective subconscious of all symbiotes, living or dead. Turns out that if you stay bonded to one long enough, that little collection of memories, feelings, and body stuff turns the place into a pretty solid afterlife and since I was Big K's special boy I get a few privileges. Like being able to slip into any symbiote that'll have me, or have little chats like this...

"I just wanted to warn you, kid... Being forgotten's a bitch. A lot of people are gonna look at you and see me. I mean, with that red hair you ever kind of look like me a little..." He laughed. "Be careful not to get labeled 'She-Carnage' or 'Kassady's Kid' or some shit like that."

He snorted. "Actually, that symbiote you're merged with, that started life as a piece of my Other... You're more symbiote than human now, so in a way, I kind of am your Daddy—"

He was not expecting my right hook. He made a show of snapping a broken jaw back into place. "Fair enough. I hate my dad too. The point is, you're gonna need to build your own rep, and fast. So, now that you've got your Big Girl pants on... What are you gonna do?"

I scoffed. "Whatever the hell I want."

Kassady looked at me, dead serious. "Yeah, no shit. But what do you want?"

I thought about it for a moment. What did I want? Fighting and getting more power was fun, but that wasn't a goal... Then it hit me.

"I'm going to kill you," I said. "Once and for all. By the time I'm done, the only thing left of your legacy will be me."

Apparently, that was just hysterical. "Good fuckin' luck," he said between peals of laughter. "As we speak that massive monster I Frankensteined together out of Stark's latest mistake and one of them bigass mutant murder machines is regenerating and growing stronger. And my Other? It's been traveling the Multiverse, growing stronger and stronger... If you want to beat us, it's not enough to be strong, kiddo. You're gonna have to be a God."

I glared back at him. "Then I'll just have to become a God then, won't I?"

"Then you'd best do it quickly, Baby Girl," he said as the laughter cut off suddenly. "Because my Other should be back soon. And when it gets back... When I meet back up with it... There's gonna be Carnage."

"Not if I Massacre you first," I quipped back.

"Heh. That's the spirit."

With Kassady's final words, I found myself back in Alchemax's basement. It doesn't seem like any time had passed during our conversation.

I walked past Misery as she pushed herself up, apprently recovered from my Venom Blast.

"I'm leaving through the front door," I said as I hit the button on one of the elevators. "Your guards had best not stop me. And... Tell Doctor Steven he was right for me, kay?"