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Venom tore Riot’s head off and chewed.
The sight broke the remaining symbiotes.
Their leader was dead.
What were the rest of them supposed to do, keep fighting for pride?
Some still had enough survival instinct to think.
The moment they realized Riot was gone, they changed sides.
“Venom!” one shouted.
“You can lead us instead!
We’ll follow you.
Whatever you want, we’ll do it.
No questions!”
Venom turned with Riot’s torso still in one hand, biting through gray flesh as if it were a slab of meat.
“Whatever I want?”
His huge white eyes gleamed with something vicious.
The symbiotes trembled under that stare.
But fear or not, they had to try.
They were trapped.
If Venom accepted, they might live.
“Yes.
Whatever you command, we obey.”
“Good,” Venom said, his voice rising.
“Then I order you to stay exactly where you are and stop squirming while I eat.
There are too many of you, and I am only one hungry monster.”
He bared his teeth.
For one frozen second, the symbiotes stared at him.
Then they erupted in curses.
“Fuck you!”
“Go to hell!”
“You crazy bastard!”
Venom laughed and swallowed the last of Riot.
Then he turned on them.
The screams began again.
While Venom ate his way through the trapped symbiotes, Nick Fury returned to the sky above San Francisco aboard a S.H.I.E.L.D.
helicarrier.
He stood on the deck, looking down at Fisherman’s Wharf with cold eyes.
“Tony, we’re ready on our end.
You?”
Tony’s voice came back through comms.
“Loaded and ready.
Say the word.”
Fury looked behind him.
“Start the drop.”
Three fighter jets launched from the helicarrier.
Each carried fuel tanks.
They swept over Fisherman’s Wharf and opened the release valves.
Fuel poured down in sheets, raining over the docks, the pinned symbiotes, and Venom himself.
Venom stopped eating the instant the smell hit him.
His head lifted.
“Oh,” he said.
“That is bad.”
Iron Man appeared in the air above the wharf, both palms opening into weapon ports.
Evan’s heart lurched.
“Damn it.”
Fire erupted from Tony’s gauntlets.
The fuel ignited in midair.
A rolling sea of flame swallowed Fisherman’s Wharf.
Symbiotes screamed inside the blaze.
Less than a minute later, the smell of burning flesh rolled over the water.
“Tony, don’t get careless,” Fury said.
“The black one has wings.
He may try to break out.”
“I know,” Tony said.
“I’ve got something ugly waiting for him if he does.”
He watched the burning wharf without blinking.
If Venom escaped, Tony would hit him with everything he had left.
But Venom did not come out.
Half an hour passed.
Nothing.
One hour.
Still nothing.
Three hours.
The ruins were silent.
“I think he’s dead,” Tony said at last.
“Three hours in that heat?” Fury said.
“Even if he was made of steel, he’d be slag by now.
Start fire suppression.”
The fire had burned for three hours.
Putting it out took six more.
By the time the last flames died, Fisherman’s Wharf was a ruin.
S.H.I.E.L.D.
coordinated with local authorities and sealed the area.
That night, every major news channel in America carried the San Francisco disaster.
The President called for a three-minute citywide blackout in mourning for the lives lost at Fisherman’s Wharf.
At exactly eight o’clock, San Francisco went dark.
The city became a field of dark glass.
And in the ruins of the wharf, one faint green light began to glow.
It flickered beneath a mound of ash like a firefly in the dark.
A green cocoon slowly receded.
Inside lay a baby.
His skin was pale as fresh snow, almost translucent.
Veins and organs showed faintly beneath the surface.
Then black slime rose over that tiny body, wrapped around him, and formed a miniature Venom.
“Ha,” Venom said, grinning with too many tiny white teeth.
“Evan, you turned into a baby.
Now I am tiny too.”
“Stop laughing and find somewhere to put me,” Evan said.
Because it was Evan.
The fire had not killed him.
By the time the flames reached him, he had already devoured enough life force to trigger another evolution.
The green cocoon had sealed out the fire.
It had also kept everyone from disturbing him.
That was how he survived.
This evolution had taken him all the way back to infancy.
Like a phoenix burning down to ashes and being born again, Evan had returned in the purest possible form.
At his command, Venom opened a pair of small black wings and lifted into the night.
I hope you enjoyed this chapter.