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Venom emerged.
The sight of him made the entire wharf tighten with fear.
He grinned, all black skin and white teeth, and the air itself seemed to flinch.
Then he looked up at Riot.
“Last time, I failed to kill you,” Venom said.
“I won’t make that mistake twice.”
He threw his head back.
Wet black wings snapped open behind him.
The monster had already been terrifying.
With wings, he became something worse.
Bigger.
Wilder.
More impossible.
“What the hell?” Tony stared through his HUD.
“He didn’t have those before.”
On the rooftop, Riot saw the wings and clenched his fists.
Greed and madness burned in his eyes.
“That bastard evolved by devouring our own kind,” Riot snarled.
“Fine.
When I kill him and eat him, that evolution becomes mine.”
The thought had barely formed before Venom beat his wings and rose into the air, landing across from him.
“You should never have brought them to Earth,” Venom said.
“Earth is a good place.
I like it here.
I won’t let you ruin it.
I’ll kill you, then I’ll kill every symbiote you dragged here.”
Riot laughed.
“You?
Alone?
You think you can kill all of us?
Did you ask me?
Did you ask our king?
Oh, wait.
I forgot to tell you.” His grin widened.
“Our king isn’t on Earth anymore.
He went to another realm, a world of gods.
Once he bonds with their divinity, he and those gods will lead an army across the universe.
Then we’ll see how you protect this little planet.”
For a moment, Evan’s voice sounded in Venom’s mind, tense and low.
‘Our king went to a world of gods?
If a symbiote bonds with gods…’
“Problem for later,” Venom growled.
“Right now, I kill you and these little stains first.”
He rose another few dozen feet.
Black spikes pushed out across his body, each one as thick as a finger.
Riot’s expression changed.
“Die,” Venom said.
The spikes fired.
They fell like black rain.
The sound ripped through the air, sharp and endless, as thousands of projectiles shot down over Fisherman’s Wharf.
The spread was so wide it covered the docks like a net.
Screams exploded below.
The spikes punched through symbiotes with horrifying force.
Nearly ten thousand of them were nailed to asphalt, walls, cars, rooftops, and steel supports.
Even Riot did not escape.
One attack.
Venom crushed an army with one attack.
Tony and Peter both went cold.
They had thought Venom might lose against so many enemies.
They had been wrong.
“Nick,” Tony said carefully, “the situation just moved out of our weight class.
This is not something you and I can handle.
You need a god for this.”
“No,” Fury snapped.
“I just got the preliminary biology back.
They’re called symbiotes.
Extreme heat and high-frequency sound hurt them.
Weakness means options.
Get incendiaries ready.
Aim for the black one.
He’s the strongest.
If he dies, we win.”
“Nick, he…”
Tony almost said Venom might not be the villain here.
After all, every target he had struck was a symbiote.
But the words stopped in his throat.
That attack had been too much.
If Venom ever used it on normal civilians, how many people would die?
He was a living nuke.
If he went off in a city, the death toll would be unthinkable.
So Tony swallowed the protest.
Earth did not need a creature that terrifying walking around unchecked.
“Fine,” he said.
“Give me eight minutes.”
Iron Man turned and shot back toward Stark Industries to reload.
Below, Venom had immobilized the army, but symbiotes were hard to kill.
The spikes had disabled them, not finished them.
Given time, they would recover.
Riot was the priority.
Venom beat his wings once and dropped in front of him.
Riot stared up from where he had been pinned, fear finally breaking through the rage.
Before, he had wanted to devour Venom.
Now he understood how stupid that dream had been.
Venom set one clawed foot on Riot’s chest.
“Riot,” he said, almost quietly.
“We did fight together once.
But things changed.
I like Earth.
I like its quiet.
I like how simple and beautiful it can be.
I don’t want to go back into space with you, killing and taking planets.”
His jaws opened.
“Rest now.”
Then Venom bit down.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.