How the hell did I sleep through a demonic invasion of New York?

It was all in my Codex memories now that I know to look. Last Christmas, while I had been sleeping, the Limbo Dimension invaded Manhattan and an army of demons walked the Earth.

Again. I wasn't even sure if I'd been born yet the first time so part of me is kind of annoyed that it had to happen the one night I turned in early.

And it was the same 'Goblin Queen' in charge this time as far as I could tell, except this time she got off scot-free for it after screwing over her partner in crime and was allowed to keep a little bit of Hell-On-Earth to use as an embassy as somehow the United States was recognizing Limbo as a nation with its own borders.

So yeah, that's a thing.

I stood, disguised in a hoodie, in front of what looked like an evil overlord's dark manor, because there is no such thing as subtly in Limbo I guess.

After a few awkward minutes, I just... climbed the stairs and knocked on the garishly oversized door. It opened, seemingly by itself, and I just... Stepped in. Immediately I felt a shift

"Hello?" I called out. "Uh... I hear that people can claim amnesty here. Like, ORCHIS is after my ass because I wrecked some of their property and instigated a jailbreak and..."

A table lamp began to move, a wide, fanged mouth opening across its glass shade to speak "Right this way, young miss." Then it lept from the table it rested upon and began hopping from the entryway down a hall.

I spent ten minutes following it in silence, somewhat bemused by the turn of events. As I followed the lamp I made note of the fact that the majority of the beings we passed, an assortment of more living objects, more traditional-looking demon humanoids, and assorted other monsters seemed to... avoid me. Going quiet or looking away when my escort led me past them. Even my escort, now that I thought about it, had seemed a bit stilted.

In comparison, the residents who seemed to be human or mutant paid me no mind.

Eventually, we made our way to an office where a rather tired-looking blonde man was sitting behind a desk.

"Got another asylum seeker, Mr. Summers," the lamp said.

"Thank you, Lampy" the tired man replied.

"I'm Paul, Lampy's my brother."

"Sorry about that."

"Quite alright, sir," Paul concluded. "Everyone makes that mistake." Then Paul hopped out of the room, the door closing itself behind him.

Mr. Summers waved me over and I took a seat across from him. "Okay young miss I'm—"

"Havok," I interrupted. "Cyclops's little brother. I helped your brother escape an illegal prison a little while ago."

"Well," Mr. Summers replied, "I guess that answers my second question. ORCHIS is after you?"

"Yeah," I confirmed. "They put a lot of effort into trying to get me a little bit ago and going back to where I've been hiding out might lead them to other people so..."

"That's all I need to hear," Mr. Summers said, "you've got more than adequate cause and, honestly for all my brother and I don't get along if you're telling the truth about helping him then I owe you one. What's your name?"

"Call me Massacre."

"Wow, you're going to do great here. Welcome to Limbo, Massacre. Hope you survive the experience," Mr. Summers finished.

"That's it?" I asked.

"Normally there would be a bit of an interview, but..." He waved his hand around. "Now, Maddie's goal with this Embassy is that she wants Limbo to be a home for outcasts and monsters and the like. Any doors you're not supposed to go through are locked so you'll have more or less free reign. I'll see about getting you a room of your own but until then... Technically you're free to come and go but if you go back outside the embassy we can't protect you and it'd probably be a terrible idea for you to go into Limbo proper."

"Why?"

"For one, the laws of Time and Space don't apply in Limbo," Mr. Summers began. "In the embassy that just means that it's bigger on the inside and the floorplan doesn't really correspond to the dimensions of the floors above and below but in Limbo itself, you could get lost and run into a future version of yourself who has been there for years, get into a fight with them, kill them, still be lost, spend years lost, find your past self who only just got lost, kill them, still exist despite the paradox, finally escape but it's a few decades before you left and it turns out you're your own great grandparent."

I blinked. "That is an oddly specific example."

"I can't prove that it's happened but it's probably happened," Mr. Summers admitted. "Next up is just.. Limbo's a big place and not everybody who lives there is okay with a given ruler, and while Limbo demons aren't inherently evil the way a Hell demon is, they're still demons, you understand?"

"Don't wander off in Not-Hell or I might get attacked by Not-Demons, got it," I quipped. "Should I also try to keep an eye out for Mon*Star's mob?"

"You're too young for that reference," Mr. Summers quipped back. "Now, before we finish is there anything I should know about? Any special accommodations you might need?"

"Uh, nothing like that," I began, "but I should probably make sure the air is clear. ORCHIS is after me, but... I'm not a mutant. Er, uh... Not... Really a mutant." I dropped my disguise, revealing myself in all my symbiotic glory. "I sort of got... Fused with a symbiote. Symbiotes absorb DNA to copy powers, mine absorbed some mutant DNA, and since my DNA is jumbled up with the symbiotes... I show up as a mutant on gene scanners and the like, but I wasn't... Born a mutant. I don't know if that's gonna cause any problems but I feel like I should be upfront about that."

"It's fine," Mr. Summers replied, "stuff like that happens from time to time. Now I'll send someone to collect you once we have a room prepared. I'd give you a map but... Well, sometimes the hallways decide to move. Just go and mingle for a bit and try not to get into any fights."

"I don't think that's gonna be much of a problem," I said with a shrug. "The demons seem to be afraid of me. No clue why."

"Maybe it's because you carry yourself like an apex predator," came a woman's voice. Entering the room was a red-headed woman in a black robe that... Okay, I'm just gonna say it, it looked like she was on her way to a porn shoot. My codex memories let me recognize her. Maddie Pryor, the Goblin Queen. Clone of Jean Grey, ex-wife of Scott Summers, mother of Cable, and someone who, as far as I can tell, didn't deserve the chance to be good she was given. Whatever, it was useful to me right now.

"I do?"

"You do," the Goblin Queen confirmed. "You've not been here even half an hour and already the rumors of an experienced killer confidently strutting her way through the halls like she owned the place, absolutely reeking of a variety of dark magics and foul blessings, are circulating."

"Well, it has been a while since I've had a chance to bathe," I deadpanned. "But unless you count reanimated skeletons, I've never killed anyone and... Wait, no, I ate that chimp. But she started it, and technically symbiote shenanigans mean that her consciousness is out there in the aether somewhere." That reminds me, I need to look up if chimps are endangered or not. If they are then that beats up settling the score with Miles for the worst thing I've ever done.

Mr. Summers didn't look like he knew how to respond to my declarations. The Goblin Queen, however, strode over to the desk and looked me in the eyes.

"Little miss," she said condescendingly and a touch threateningly, "a cultural meme down here is that the fate of Limbo is often tied to that of 'Earth Girls.' A girl your age, with the kind of power you possess but obviously so little experience... Eventually, the stronger and smarter demons might think they can use you. It's basically prison rules down here, it might be best for you to learn humility quickly or attach yourself to someone strong."

"Or I could just kick the ass of the strongest bitch in the yard," I said back.

"I'd prefer that those seeking asylum not pick fights," The Goblin Queen explained.

"Oh I won't start it, I'll just finish it... Did you know that when a symbiote bonds to someone, even for a second, they leave a little bit of themselves behind?" I began. "It's called a codex. It basically archives everything about you. Your DNA and other biological information, your memories, your emotions, any weird shit you get exposed to, etcetera etcetera. Symbiotes can read them, to get an idea if someone's a good host, or they can consume them to get that information which leads to a power-up."

"And you're telling me this, why?" The Goblin Queen asked.

I ignored her. "And the thing is, while the biggest piece of the codex is in the spine, they're actually bonded to every single cell. Down to the DNA even. You get blood from someone with a codex, you have a codex. You temporarily fuse with someone in a teleporter accident, You share codices. You get cloned from someone with a codex, you inherit their codex." The Goblin Queen's eyes narrowed but she said nothing. "Your son... Nathan... Did you know that he has an almost perfect memory? He recalls almost everything back to the day he was born. Deadpool tried to kill me a little bit ago, a bit of a misunderstanding really, but during it, I ripped the codices out of his spine and consumed them to heal myself and... Your son, Nathan... he had a symbiote as a teenager. Not for very long, mind you, but long enough... And Fused with Deadpool for a bit..."

I looked the Goblin Queen dead in the eyes. "I have experienced Nathan's memories of the time when, when he was a baby, you tried to sacrifice him in a ritual meant to bring about hell on Earth. From his perspective."

I could see the fury in the Goblin Queen's eyes and then felt her telepathic probe. Unfortunately for her, while my own psychic powers were rather lacking compared to hers, I had inherited millennia of experience in psionic combat from Apocalypse and her ex-husband's training in establishing both active and passive psychic defenses. It wasn't that hard to direct the probe into a series of every traumatic experience Cable ever had regarding his birth mother up to when his timeline of memories cut off.

"You could have just given me a friendly warning," I said while she recoiled. "Instead you had to be a bitch. You had to start a fight." I snaked a tendril across the floor while she was focused on my face. "So now I'm finishing it: You're not special, Maddie. Yeah, your life sucks. I've got a codex from Scott, too. Just running off like that was a dick move but... He regretted it. He was going to come back. He was absolutely devastated when he thought you were dead. And even if he had outright abandoned you, that doesn't justify any of the shit you've pulled."

"Neither does being kidnapped, neither does getting shot... Okay, I guess finding out that you're a clone who existed only to be a broodmare was pretty bad but like, plenty of people who find out that they're clones go on to live full lives without going full psycho and becoming a demon sorcerer so..."

I raised up the tendril and struck her in the spine with a needle, harvesting the Codex she'd inherited from Jean Grey.

Jean's codex, and thus The Goblin Queen's, was like Scott's. Modified to bond, absorb, and adapt quickly and exposed to all sorts of shit. Like getting eaten by a Poison and then reforming. Not something I wanted to experience again if we're being honest. Phoenix fire, nothing new I only got tiny embers of that just like I only got tiny embers from Scott, but... Maddie had been connected to Limbo for a long time even before she became its Queen.

The adaptions to their psionic powers came in first, my mind expanding and other, fragments of minds forming, subservient to and extensions of mine but to help control and empower my psionics.

Then... then came the adaptions to the power of Limbo. I could have formed wings at any time, I'd consumed codices from symbiote dragons after all, but now those draconic wings erupted from my back unhindered. Small horns, black as night, jutted from my brow. Small, maybe a few inches at most, but tampering to sharp points and with ridges not unlike a goat's. I grew somewhat taller, somewhat more muscular.

...And then, as I now had adaptations for both halves of Cable's power, the rest of his psionics came in all at once. I'd have to be careful about that.

"No. Nothing," I said once I finished processing her memories. "Nothing you've experienced justifies or excuses the atrocities you've committed. Some of which, hey, it turns out are worse than I thought." Seriously, the invasion last December was done because Maddie here was ticked off that she didn't get to raise the son that she outright tried to murder to spite her ex-husband. "Now, to be one hundred percent clear, I am not trying to downplay what you went through. I'm not saying you haven't suffered, but... You've got all of your faculties about you. You could have chosen differently, you had so many chances to choose differently. You're only here right now because Jean Grey showed you kindness and mercy that you didn't deserve. You're not just a copy of her, you're your own person. Too bad it's a shit one. You'd best do what you can to earn what she gave you." I finished.

Mr. Summers seemed to have been stunned speechless by the confrontation, but now he'd found his voice. "That, that's quite enough."

"I'm terribly sorry, Mr. Summers," I said. Part of me meant it. "But she started it."

"Out," the Goblin Queen insisted through gritted teeth. "Get out of my home, my embassy. There'll be no asylum for you here."

"Fine with me," I said. "I don't need it anymore. But... Before I go, there's someone here that I can help... You could and should have helped them, but betrayed them after you got what you wanted. I'll go help the person you left to suffer, and then I'll be out of your hair for good," I said as I walked out the door, "please don't try to stop me."

I wasn't lying about not needing asylum anymore. I'd had a plan on how to get to Asgard, you see. I figured that if I combined the teleporting killer's powers with the tiniest Spark of Valkyrie's divinity that I'd get from her codex, I'd be able to teleport to Asgard, but... Didn't work out that way. turns out that the tiniest spark wasn't enough, and besides, her dimensional travel abilities were limited to going to afterlives and back. In theory, if I'd had enough, I could have gone straight to Valhalla and walked out again, but... I didn't have enough juice, and something in the back of my head told me that there'd be consequences for that regardless.

...I should make a proper apology to Dr. Foster at some point. I'd intended to ask for her codex, she wasn't a bad guy and hadn't done anything to me, but... I started acting on the plan on autopilot while delirious.

Anyway, that was before I'd absorbed the dark power of Limbo and gained the might, the muscle, and the menace of Massacre... Why did I have Silverhawks on the brain today? Between that, Maddie's knowledge of sorcery, and the dark elven magic I'd gotten from Svartalfvenom's corpse I think I could manage something

After strutting my way through the halls of the Limbo like I owned the place for a while, I found the circular entrance to a gilded cage and used the plundered knowledge of the Goblin queen to open it before stepping into the artificial forest inside.

Sitting in the middle of the glorified prison was a man in a purple and green set of tights. He wore no mask, but I could see it on the ground beside him.

"Mr. Reilly," I called to gain his attention. "I'm here to help you... I can give you back what was taken from you."

He snapped to attention, twisting to face me and looking for all the world like a feral version of Peter Parker... Side note, learning that Spider-Man was the photojournalist who took all the pictures of Spider-Man had been a little disappointing.

"How," he... Didn't so much ask as insist.

"Do you remember bonding with the Carnage symbiote?" I could feel the codex in his spine and I could recognize anything associated with Carnage on sight, proverbially speaking.

"Vaguely," he said. "Everything... It's a mess up here," he admitted. "Ever since... Ever since they stole me from me."

"When you bond with a Symbiote," I explained, "a little piece stays behind and sort of... Records your, well, your everything. Every memory you had at the moment you first had Carnage enter your body is perfectly preserved at that moment, and every feeling and experience since then at the exact moment you felt them. I can take a piece of your codex and gain those memories, and then use my telepathic powers to copy them back into you. I... I don't know if you'll be back to normal but..."

"...Better than being an empty Chasm," he said. "Do it. Just... Be sure to give me everything. Good, bad, I don't care anymore. I just want to be me again."

"Alright." I generated my needle. "This is gonna hurt a little bit," I warned.

"I said do it!" He shouted. I didn't need to be told a third time. I extracted his codex and...

There are no words for the horrors he had been through.

"Are you absolutely sure that you want everything," I asked once I'd sorted through it all. "Because you, uh... Died. A lot."

"I don't care, give it to me!"

So I did. I gave him all of it. Every high, every low. Everything from his creation to his time as Spider-Man's replacement, to the 'clone Saga,' his death, his countless resurrections that drove him mad, his efforts to regain his sanity after that 'Clone Conspiracy' thing, getting screwed over by Mephisto, nearly losing his soul to the interference of a well-meaning angel-child, miraculously recovering during an adventure across the Spider-Verse, being the hero of Las Vegas, the treachery of the Beyond Corporation, to the invasion, to just now.

And of course, the memories he'd originally inherited from the man he was cloned from, whose theft had caused his second descent into insanity in the first place.

When I was done, he clutched his head and screamed and my blood ran cold. "Are, are you alright?" My immediate thought was that I'd accidentally lobotomized the poor man.

"No," he said after too long a pause. Then he sat up. Tears were running down his face, but he was smiling. "But I think I will be. Thank you."

I looked away awkwardly. "It's nothing... I just. I realized I could help and I'd have been a real asshole if I didn't."

"That reminds me of something my uncle used to say," Ben Reilly said with a smile. "And it feels great to be able to say that. I can't, I can't possibly thank you enough. What... What's your name?"

"Call me M... Maria. Call me Maria," I don't know why but... I was a monster, but giving him my name as a monster didn't feel right.

"Maria, if you ever need anything—"

"Again, it was nothing," I insisted. Then I noticed the Goblin Queen standing at the still-open entrance to this prison, clutching her magical Scythe of Sorrows. "I think that's my cue to leave. I wish I could do more to help you, Mr. Reilly."

"You've done plenty," he insisted. "And please, call me Ben."

"Well, good luck from here on out then, Ben."

"You too, Maria."

I maintained eye contact with The Goblin Queen as I began glowing red and burst into scarlet flames. With any luck, I'd find myself in Asgard on the other side of this jump.