Beside a dumpster on a San Francisco side street, a filthy teenage boy crouched on the sidewalk, his eyes locked on the people moving up and down the block like a predator watching a herd.
“Venom, tell me you didn’t lie to me.
You said Riot brought millions of symbiotes to Earth.
I’ve been waiting three days, and I haven’t seen a single one.”
The boy kept his voice low.
“Patience, kid.”
When the voice answered, a slick black mass rose out of Evan Reed’s back and gathered over his shoulder, shaping itself into a face that was part comical, part terrifying.
Evan sighed.
He had been here for four days.
Four days was enough time to understand the basics.
Enough time to accept that this was no longer his old life.
Enough time to digest everything the sticky alien now fused to him had dumped into his head.
The thing had a name: Venom.
An alien life-form.
A symbiote.
Unable to survive on Earth for long without a host.
And now, Evan was his host.
There had been other hosts before him.
The best match was a man named Eddie Brock.
That man was dead now.
According to the symbiote, he and Eddie once fought another of their kind called Riot.
The plan was simple: leave Earth in a ship, return with millions more, and wipe out humanity.
They tried to stop him.
They had failed.
Riot beat Venom badly enough to leave wounds that would kill him within days.
Eddie died in the battle.
Worst of all, the bastard still managed to bring millions of symbiotes back to Earth.
They were already hidden among humans.
After that, Venom found Evan.
The bond formed the moment Evan opened his eyes in someone else’s life.
In a grim, literal way, they had both survived by becoming one thing.
“Patience, my ass.
It’s been three days.
If we don’t catch one soon, you’re dead.”
He muttered the words under his breath, but his eyes never left the street.
He kept scanning faces, bodies, movements.
Hunting.
“If I live, you live.
If I die, you die.” The black face over the boy’s shoulder stretched into a grin, white teeth gleaming.
“Permanent fusion, remember?
We’re one body now.
Neither of us gets to walk away.”
“And you’re smiling about that?”
He cursed quietly and went back to watching the crowd.
Venom was right.
They were bound together now.
Permanent fusion meant neither of them could separate from the other.
If one of them died, the other went down with him.
That was why he was desperate to find prey.
Venom’s injuries from the fight with Riot were fatal.
Seven days left.
That was all he had.
Unless they caught another symbiote first.
If Venom devoured one of his own kind, he could absorb its life force and keep himself alive.
“Whining won’t make them crawl out,” Venom said.
“If they’re hiding, they’re hiding.
We may not find anything today.
Come on.
I’m hungry.”
He stared at the street for another moment, unwilling to give up.
Then he finally clicked his tongue and stood.
He cut into a nearby alley and headed toward the small market on the corner.
The life he had stepped into belonged to a runaway.
Before Evan woke up here, the kid had been sleeping under bridges and on sidewalks, barely surviving one night at a time.
Evan had changed that fast.
He rented a room, bought clothes, and started living like a person instead of a stray.
As for the money, well.
He had taken it.
Having a symbiote made ordinary street trash easy to deal with.
This city had more than enough predators.
Taking cash from a few of them was not exactly the worst sin a person could commit.
Inside the market, he headed straight for the chocolate aisle.
Symbiotes needed huge amounts of energy.
Chocolate and raw meat worked best.
He could not make himself swallow raw flesh while fully conscious, so for the past few days chocolate had been the only acceptable compromise.
Except the shelf was empty.
Completely empty.
He stared at it.
“Hey,” he called toward the register.
“What happened to the chocolate?”
The woman behind the counter looked up.
She was in her forties or fifties, with tired eyes and the kind of practical calm that came from running a corner store for too many years.
“Sorry, honey.
Sold out.
New shipment comes tomorrow.”
He pressed his lips together.
‘Fine.
Another store, then.’
He turned to leave, but before he made it two steps, three large men walked through the door.
The instant they entered, his eyebrows rose.
‘Wrong.’
Something about them was wrong.
“Venom,” he murmured.
“Those three smell off.
Take a look.”
Since the fusion, his senses had sharpened far beyond human limits.
He could see farther, hear more clearly, jump higher.
His sense of smell had become almost painfully precise.
As soon as he spoke, his eyes changed.
His dark irises vanished, replaced by a flat, milky white.
“Oh,” Venom said, delighted.
“Jackpot.
Prey.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.