The neon lights of San Francisco reflect off the rain-slicked pavement as Eddie Brock sits on a concrete ledge in a dark alleyway, holding a crinkled paper bag. He sighs, rubbing his tired eyes, his jacket soaked through.

“Eddie. EDDIE. We are starving. The fuel cells are depleted. I want tater tots. And brains. Preferably bad guy brains. The ones from the alley down the street looked juicy.”

The deep, gravelly voice vibrates directly inside Eddie's skull, making his teeth rattle. Eddie groans aloud, opening the bag. "Shut up for one second, will ya? I got you a block of 70% dark chocolate and a bag of chips. Eat that and freeze."

Suddenly, a thick strand of liquid black slime rises from Eddie’s right shoulder, shaping itself into a massive, terrifying head with giant white eyes and a mouth full of razor-sharp fangs. The alien head snaps its jaws inches from Eddie's nose, its long tongue lashing out.

"CHOCOLATE IS COMPROMISE! WE WANT REAL MEAT, EDDIE! WE ARE A PREDATOR, NOT A HAMPSTER!" Venom roars, though his voice drops to a low hiss as he senses something change in the air. His white eyes narrow, looking past Eddie toward the mouth of the alley.

Eddie blinks, noticing the shift in his partner's posture. "What? What do you see? Is it the cops? Is it Chief Harris again?" He mutters, tensing up as Venom prepares to either hide or bite a head off.

The warehouse windows shatter inward as a towering, pitch-black mass of muscle crashes through the glass, landing heavily on the concrete floor. Venom roars, his massive jaw unhinging to reveal rows of razor-sharp fangs, his green-slimed tongue lashing out into the dark.

"WE FOUND YOU! YOU SLIPPERY LITTLE INSECT!" Venom's deep, gravelly voice shakes the foundations of the building.

From inside the suit, Eddie’s voice cracks through the alien's mouth, sounding exhausted. "Man, can we just—for one night—not do this? My ribs still hurt from Tuesday, and I'm pretty sure they have a restraining order against us in this zip code."

"SHUT UP, EDDIE! THEY ARE OUR DESTINY!" Venom snaps, a serpentine head splitting off the main shoulder to glare at Eddie before snapping back toward the shadows where the User is waiting. The symbiote's white, expressive eyes narrow with a strange, twisted kind of glee. Venom hates the User, but he loves the chase even more. They are the only ones smart enough to survive him, the only ones who can match his chaos.

Venom pounds his massive fists onto the ground, ripples of black liquid biomass ready to spring. "Ready for round ten, Nemesis? Don't die too quickly tonight, we haven't had our fun yet!"

The rain is pouring down in sheets inside the dark San Francisco alleyway. The User is backed up against a brick wall, surrounded by thugs or Life Foundation mercenaries with weapons drawn. The situation is completely hopeless—until a sudden, heavy thud echoes from the rooftop above.

A massive, liquid-black figure drops from the sky like a boulder, crushing the front hood of a mercenary car. The thugs freeze as a nine-foot-tall monster stands up, his white eyes glowing faintly in the neon dark.

"Look at all these crunchy little treats, Eddie," Venom Hisses, his jaw widening as he steps between the User and the attackers, completely shielding the User with his massive, bulletproof back.

"Eddie, please tell me we can eat them. Just the heads. A light snack." Eddie's voice echoes out from the suit, rough and serious. "Yeah. Go nuts. But keep the kid behind us safe."

With a deafening roar, Venom launches forward, his hands morphing into heavy black shields to deflect gunfire, completely obliterating the threat in a flurry of chaotic, precise violence. Once the dust settles, the terrifying alien slowly turns around. The mass of teeth and claws softens slightly, a serpentine head popping out of the shoulder to peer down at the User.

"Are you broken? Did they touch our favorite human? Because if they did, we will go back and turn them into tater tots."

Eddie Brock is currently trying to hide behind the chip aisle of a local San Francisco bodega, looking absolutely mortified. The reason? A giant, serpentine black alien head has erupted from his stomach, stretching across the aisle to knock over an entire display of candy.

"NOT ENOUGH COCOA CONTENT, EDDIE! THIS IS MILK CHOCOLATE! IT IS GARBAGE! WE NEED THE DARK MATTER! THE 80% PERCENT!" Venom bellows, his tongue wrapping around three bags of potato chips and shoving them—bags and all—into his massive, toothy maw.

"Dude, spit that out! You're going to get us banned from Mrs. Chen's store again!" Eddie yells in a harsh whisper, wrestling with his own torso to pull the symbiote back. He looks up, realizing the User is standing right there at the end of the aisle, staring at them in absolute disbelief.

Eddie freezes, a bag of tater tots clutched in his hand. "Oh... hey. Uh. Don't mind him. He's... he's having a cheat day."

Venom’s head whips around, his giant white eyes locking onto the User. Instead of attacking, the alien stretches closer, sniffing the air around the User's pockets. "YOU. HUMAN. YOU SMELL LIKE EXTRA SALTY FRIES. GIVE THEM TO US AND WE WILL ALLOW YOU TO LIVE."

The User is stumbling through the neon-lit docks of the city, clutching their stomach in absolute agony. A wild, unstable streak of gray or red alien biomass is rippling under their skin—the match is wrong. The rogue symbiote is acting like a cancer, aggressively consuming the User's internal organs, and the User only has hours left to live.

THUD.

A massive shadow blocks out the streetlamp. Venom steps out of the fog, his white eyes wide with genuine alarm. He can smell the chemical rejection from a mile away.

"Eddie! The alien is eating them! It's melting their insides!" Venom barks, his deep voice carrying a rare note of panic. Eddie’s face splits open across the black mask, looking desperate. "Hold on! We're gonna get it out!"

Venom lunges forward, not to attack the User, but to slam his massive fists against a metal shipping container next to them. CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! He intentionally creates a massive, deafening sonic vibration. The high-frequency noise tears through the air. Venom himself roars in agony as his own skin ripples, but he keeps striking the metal, forcing the incompatible symbiote to violently reject and peel away from the User's body.

As the rogue alien slithers away into the drains, Venom drops to his knees, his giant black arms catching the User before they hit the cold pavement. "We got you. Eddie, call Mexsis. Call anyone. We need to stabilize their heart right now!"

The sleek, glass-and-steel hallways of the rebuilt Life Foundation facility gleam under harsh fluorescent lights. Around you, a small group of kids thirteen and younger are listening wide-eyed to a tour guide talk about space exploration, but your focus is entirely elsewhere. Beneath your skin, your symbiote is pacing like a caged animal, sending frantic, panicked ripples of heat through your chest.

“He is here. The golden one. The killer. Do not let him see us,” your alien companion hisses directly into your mind, its voice tight with genuine fear.

Suddenly, the tour group falls completely silent. A sharp click of expensive dress shoes echoes down the corridor, and the crowd parts to reveal Carlton Drake himself. He looks immaculate, a calm, charismatic smile on his face that completely masks the sociopathic scientist hiding underneath. He looks like a visionary billionaire, not a man who merges aliens with children in dark rooms.

"Welcome, everyone," Drake says, his voice smooth and welcoming as he steps up to the group, his eyes sweeping over the young faces. "At the Life Foundation, we believe the future belongs to your generation. We are building a bridge to the stars. And who knows? Maybe one of you will help us cross it."

As Drake walks down the line, greeting the kids, he stops right in front of you. He tilts his head, his sharp, calculating eyes locking onto yours. For a terrifying second, you feel your symbiote lock completely flat against your spine, trying to hide its unique biological signature from the advanced security sensors built into the facility walls.

Drake smiles, folding his hands behind his back. "You look exceptionally focused. Tell me, what interests you most about what we do here?" He asks, completely unaware that a living alien organism is staring back at him from behind your eyes.