Many Thousand Feet Beneath (Venom fic, gen)
title: Many Thousand Feet Beneath
author: monicawoe
word-count:~4,600
characters: Eddie Brock/Venom, Mrs. Chen, Liz Allan
genre:gen, PG-13
warnings: gore, some violence
story summary: When it appears Mrs. Chen's store has fallen prey to gentrification, Eddie and Venom investigate the new block owners and uncover a conspiracy along with a nest of problems lurking beneath the city streets.
Written for the Venom Holiday Exchange 2019 for cupidsbow.
Thanks to my beta luckyraeve!
Eddie set their purchases on the deli counter, trying to remember what he was forgetting. “Paper towels!” he said. Venom flung out a tendril and grabbed a roll from two aisles over.
“Ten twenty-five,” Mrs. Chen said, not looking at him. Her eyes were red, Eddie noticed, on further study.
“You okay, Mrs. C?”
“Fine,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked, quietly. Venom writhed a bit around Eddie’s back, curious.
“It’s complicated.”
“Most things are,” Eddie said, evenly. “Want to tell me about it?”
“No. It’s not your problem.”
Eddie moved a step closer, Venom gathering around his ankles, lifting him up until he could see eye to eye with Mrs. Chen. “Is somebody messing with you again? Because if they are-“
“We will show them the error of their ways!” Venom finished, manifesting their head next to Eddie’s.
“No, nothing like that,” Mrs. Chen said. She let out a huff, sniffling. “They’re raising the rent on me.”
“Oh.”
“By eighty-five percent!” she said, getting angrier. “Fifteen years I’ve been here running this shop and the rent increases have always been painful, but reasonable. But this-“
“That’s insane,” Eddie said, sympathetic.
“It’s undoable.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to close.”
“What?” Venom snarled, alarmed.
“Or try to find a new location,” Mrs. Chen continued. “But this is-it was my uncle's shop. I took over for him when he got too old and I've kept it going all this time." She paused for a moment to clear her throat. "I live upstairs, and it's a tiny little shoebox of an apartment, but it's my home. Plus, the rent in this city-I mean if you look at other storefronts, I’ve been lucky until now.” She laughed sadly and Eddie’s heart hurt just a little more.
“Who’s your landlord?” he asked.
“Eddie-“
“We will eat this lord!” Venom said, tongue lashing.
Eddie patted them on the head. “No, we won’t. Just-let me have a talk with him.”
“If it was my old landlord, I could have a talk with him,” Mrs. Chen said, throwing up her hands. “It’s a new managing agent. The building got bought up, along with everything else on the block.”
“Really?” Eddie’s concern started to branch out into professional curiosity. “By whom?”
Mrs. Chen reached behind her into a drawer and pulled out an envelope. She set it down on the counter facing Eddie and pointed at the return address. Blue Delta.
“They don’t return any calls or emails, and the one time I got somebody on the phone they told me the rent increase was non-negotiable, and that if I called again they’d take legal action!" Mrs. Chen threw her hands in the air in frustration.
Eddie glared at the envelope, focused on the sender’s address, name and logo. The triangle in between the words reminded him of something, though he couldn’t quite place what. “I’ll look into it.”
“Eddie, please. I don’t need any more trouble. Worst case I’ll try to find a storefront somewhere outside the city, maybe in Oakland."
“No!” Venom said, alarmed. “Then where will we go when we are out of food?”
“There’s other stores. Grocery stores even,” Mrs. Chen said, “with lower prices.”
“Eddie says your store is more important and your food is better.”
Mrs. Chen smiled, still sniffling. “I’ll be fine.” She handed Eddie his change and bag. “Have a good night, you two.”
“You too,” Eddie said, but his mind was racing.
#
Eddie rang the door buzzer a third time. Still nothing.
“Maybe they’re closed today,” Venom said, serpentine head stretching towards the door.
“No, this is a front,” Eddie said, crouching down to get a closer look at the door lock.
“A front what?”
“I mean it’s fake. This isn’t an actual office. Might be they have a shell corporation or something to make it all official looking but it ain’t real.“ Eddie pulled the lock pick from his pocket and set to work.
“What are you doing?”
“Breaking and entering. Hush.” The lock gave a satisfying click as it retracted and Eddie opened the door with a smug smile.
“We could have just smashed through the door.”
“Yeah and then they’d definitely know we were here.” Eddie stepped into the mostly empty office and looked around: at the very back was one desk with a phone, a laptop and a small printer. And absolutely nothing else. No sign that anyone had even been there. “Huh.”
“Seems you were right.”
“What a waste of space,” Eddie said, opening the laptop. “This is what, three thousand square foot?” He grimaced at the passcode prompt.
“Now what?” Venom asked.
“Now we hope that corporate lackeys are all still bad at passwords.” Eddie shrugged and typed in 1,2,3,4,5,6. A moment later the computer started up.
“Idiots.”
“Yup.” Eddie let out a breath and scanned the file folders. He pulled a thumb drive from his pocket and stuck it into the usb slot, then copied over everything that looked interesting.
“Is this still breaking and entering? Or does this fall under another crime?”
“Depends on what we get. Could be theft or even corporate espionage.”
“Sounds delicious.”
Eddie snorted a laugh and took the thumb drive back out. “Let’s go.”
They headed for the door, but Venom thrust out a tendril, holding the door shut. “Footsteps. Someone’s coming.”
“Shit.” Eddie looked behind him.
“Window.”
“Yeah, okay.” Eddie broke into a jog as Venom covered him, flicking out a tendril to slide open the window just before they reached it. They sailed through, Venom pulling the window shut behind them again, and landed on the roof of the building across the street.
#
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Eddie muttered. “There has to be something here they want, but there’s nothing.” He poked his finger at his laptop screen. “Just sewers.”
“Sewers are something,” Venom said. Their head swiveled as they reached out a tendril to grab another handful of potato chips. Crunching them loudly, they added, “Amf blueprints only schphow you publicly known structures.”
Eddie stared at Venom. “What’d you just say?”
“Blueprints only show what they want the public to see,” Venom said. “It's what you said three months ago when we were looking for the Raft.” Venom narrowed their eyes. “See? I always listen to you.”
“Sometimes,” Eddie conceded. “Not always.” He kissed the side of Venom’s head. “We’re better off not always listening to me.” Eddie zoomed in on the intersection of Kearny and Clay and then pulled up the same intersection on his phone’s map. “But in this case…” his eyes widened as he saw the building there.
“Allan Chemical, a subsidiary of Alchemax,” Venom read.
“Yup.” Eddie traced the triangular A in Alchemax and finally the logo of Blue Delta clicked. This was where he'd seen the triangle before.
“Are they bad?”
“Yup.”
Venom licked their lips. “Are we headed to the sewers?”
“Yup,” Eddie said, less enthusiastically.
#
They dropped down into the sewer slowly, Venom swirling down around Eddie’s shoulders and winding around his legs.
“This isn’t that bad,” Eddie said, blinking down the dimly lit corridors to the left and right. “Thought it’d smell more.”
“Your senses simply aren’t acute enough to pick up all the odors,” Venom said enclosing the top half of Eddie’s face and part of his mouth, long tongue reaching out into the darkness. “Taste the air.”
“Ugh,” Eddie said, nose wrinkling in disgust. “What is that?”
“The smell of decay,” Venom said, “and some fairly fresh viscera. That way.” They flung out a tendril, pointing to the left.
“Then we go that way.” Eddie rolled his shoulders back, as Venom enclosed them fully.
The length of tunnel was empty for a good stretch but soon opened up into a larger arching passage, abnormally large for a sewer system Eddie thought. They turned, still following the smell, which grew stronger the further down the hall they got. The corridor changed as they went on, solid stone changing suddenly to metal grating. The stench was coming from directly below them; Eddie crouched down and looked through the grates, Venom’s enhanced visual spectrum letting him see details he wished instantly he hadn’t. Whatever was beneath the grating appeared to be meat-intestines, chunks of bones and other messier things. Some bits were moving, seemingly of their own volition, which made Eddie want to hurl and also jump away. But he was on a case, and it had just taken a sharp turn into the seriously weird. What the hell?
“Theses organs were not recently harvested, but they’re being...preserved somehow,” Venom said, reaching a tendril down to poke at one of the rippling bits of intestine.
Don’t touch it! Eddie thought frantically.
“We will learn a lot more if we do,” Venom said, nudging the intestine experimentally. It writhed again and a flicker of electrical charge ran through it. “Interesting.”
Interesting. And super super gross.
“We’ve eaten worse than this. You have eaten worse than this.”
Not helping.
“The movement is a vestigial peristaltic wave. Not alive. There’s no consciousness, no mind behind what it’s doing.”
I would hope not. And what’s a peristaltic wave?
“What your intestines do when they’re digesting.”
Lovely. Where’s the electricity coming from?
“Good question.” Venom lashed with their tongue, scenting the air. “That way.” They broke into a run and skidded to a halt when the walkway suddenly stopped, broken off as though something had torn through it-or burned through it-they thought, studying the smooth concave shape of the metal at the end. They peered down but saw nothing but darkness. There were no lights here, and even Venom’s enhanced vision wasn’t strong enough to see into the pit below.
They leapt up from the walkway, a good thirty feet high and grabbed hold of the upper stones of the archway, suspended upside down so they could look straight down and then began to lowering themselves.
I hate this. A lot.
“We have no choice. We must go where the story takes us.”
Why did you have to start listening to me today?
“There.” Venom pointed down, eyes narrowing as they caught a spark of light below them.
What...what is that?
Venom lowered them a few more feet, but their mass was stretched to the limits, unraveling from Eddie’s body until his legs and part of his arms were exposed, along with some of his face.
“Shit.”
“We will not drop you.”
“No, I mean, oh shit,” Eddie said, pointing. Because something was moving below them-something fast, sparking with a strange blue glow. The same lightning he’d seen in the flesh above.
Venom closed their eyes, focusing on sound, amplifying it until Eddie too could hear.
“What is that?”
“Feet. Legs. Thousands of them.”
“Feet?”
Venom leapt suddenly, as an arc of lightning shot towards them. “They’ve seen us.”
Eddie would’ve asked who, but didn’t need to. The dark hole around them lit up blue from one second to the next as dozens, then hundreds of giant glowing millipedes came rushing up the sides of the pit, all of them crackling with electricity.
“Shit. Oh shit oh shit.”
“Yes. Close your eyes.” Venom retracted their tendrils suddenly, immediately yanking them up, using their tendrils like a cross between a grappling hook and a bungee cord.
Eddie felt like he was going to puke, but didn’t, consoling himself instead with the secure warmth he felt once again surrounded fully by his other.
The comfort was fleeting. One of the giant millipedes had scurried all the way up and with a jolt of electric blue flew off the wall, hurtling right towards Venom.
They dodged its pincers, and caught it, holding its writhing body as far away from their body as they could without losing leverage.
“Fascinating,” Venom said. “We cannot bond with this.”
Why would you want to?
“To understand it.”
It doesn’t seem to want to understand us! Eddie thought furiously as the millipede whipped its body around again, pincers coming dangerously close to Venom’s eyes.
“We should not consume this,” Venom said.
Agreed. Any other ideas about how to stop it?
Venom let go of the millipede’s tail with one hand and grabbed it closer to the midsection, then twisted violently until it came apart with a loud echoing snap. Both halves sparked bright blue and then went limp. Venom held one half up until it caught the wan light from above; its insides were an odd jello-like texture, translucent green, and its spine looked silver, almost like it was made of metal.
Venom pulled up on their tendrils and swung them towards the catwalk of horrors, but just as it was in reach, a forcefield of some kind flashed into view, a dome, made of that same electric blue, that fit perfectly against the cut half circle in the walkway. Venom didn’t seem affected by the field at all, but the millipede reacted instantly, both halves coming back to life, whipping about ineffectively. “Very strange,” Venom said as they landed.
There-on the wall! Eddie hadn’t noticed it on the way in, but there was a small metal plaque mounted at the start of the walkway. They moved closer and read, ALCHEMAX. Gotcha. Eddie had crossed paths with Alchemax before and unfortunately wasn’t even that surprised they were involved in this mess. Alchemax didn't have a building in this area until recently. Not exactly prime real estate for big corporations, not even their subsidiaries. Figured they had something else going on.
"Something they're trying to hide."
Exactly. Let’s go where the story’s leading us.
“Agreed,” Venom grumbled, and ran quickly towards the sewer entrance.
#
"We need to look presentable," Eddie said rolling his shoulders awkwardly as he glared into the bathroom mirror. He'd changed into his best suit but it fit poorly, too tight across the shoulders, too loose at the waist.
Take off the jacket.
"It's not that bad. I can't go see a corporate bigwig without one."
Take off the jacket. I have an idea.
"Sure, why not," Eddie said with a sigh and took off the jacket, tossing it back on the bed.
Venom streamed over his white button down shirt, becoming paler, the same shade of charcoal as Eddie's nice Armani slacks-one of the last gifts from Anne that he'd worn to nearly every fancy wedding or event they'd had to go to. The symbiote shimmered and undulated, contracting around Eddie's shoulders neck and waist in the shape of a jacket. An impeccably tailored expensive-looking jacket; a perfect match.
"Very nice," Eddie said, thoroughly impressed. "We could save a ton of money like this."
And buy more chocolate?
"Exactly." Eddie patted his bicep squeezing Venom in thanks. "I had no idea you could do that."
We can do all sorts of things together.
"For now," Eddie said, grabbing his keys and the duffel bag he'd stashed the mostly-dead millipede in, "let's follow this story together, and help Mrs. Chen."
#
"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist asked. He looked bored and clearly already knew what Eddie's answer would be. Alchemax headquarters was in the largest, fanciest skyscraper San Francisco had to offer, and thanks to the gleaming freshly polished floors of the lobby, Eddie still felt underdressed despite the herculean effort Venom had made to polish up his duds.
"No. But Ms. Allan will want to see me," Eddie countered, with his most charming smirk.
"Ms. Allan is extremely busy, sir. She doesn't see anyone without an appointment."
"Oh I think she'll make an exception for me," Eddie said, and nudged Venom mentally, who flowed out and around Eddie's jaw just enough to widen his mouth and sharpen his teeth.
The receptionist paled. "Who should I say is calling?"
"Eddie Brock."
Pleasant expression plastered back into place, the receptionist tapped his headset and said, "Ma'am there's a Mr. Brock here to see you. He has...quite the winning smile." He kept his eyes glued to Eddie, and nodded after a moment. "Use her private elevator, last one on the right.”
Eddie headed where the receptionist had pointed and found the private elevator, easily identifiable by the two brick house sized guards wearing sunglasses and headsets. Eddie walked up to them and cleared his throat. “Ms. Allan’s expecting me.”
Without a word, the two guards stepped aside as the elevator opened and followed Eddie inside.
Great. “How far up is office?” Eddie asked, trying to make conversation.
The guards didn’t answer, looking for all the world like animated bodybuilder mannequins. Or maybe animatronics.
“Top floor? She met me in a conference room last time.” Still nothing. Eddie let out a breath between his teeth that came out as a soft whistle.
I have an idea.
Don’t piss them off.
Why not?
Not looking for a reason to get kicked out before we even see her, we’re here to figure out the story, and help Mrs. C. Eddie jostled the duffel bag lightly and the thing inside twitched slightly. Still alive. One of the guards took notice, his head turning a fraction of an inch towards the bag.
Venom took the opportunity to shoot out a wire-thin tendril, straight at the tip of the other guard’s ear. He flinched, slapped his hand at it and glared first at Eddie who ignored him, standing there as innocently as he possibly could, and then looked at his cohort, big head turning slowly in accusation.
The elevator was only at floor thirty-three. Twenty-eight left to go.
After a long second, the guard turned his head back to the front and Venom repeated the trick, this time flicking him in the neck. “Knock it off you little prick,” he snarled.
“Who me?” Eddie smiled up at him and turned so he was facing them, as Venom surreptitiously threaded another tendril along the floor. “What’d I do?”
The tendril poked the guard in the ribs, and there was clearly no way Eddie could have reached him from where he was standing. The guard’s gears creaked and he turned towards his partner, face gone red. “Knock it off Frankie!”
Frankie shrugged. “Wasn’t, me, Max.”
To underline his point, Venom poked Frankie in the back, making him flinch. “What the hell?” Now Frankie’s face had gone red too. “You think that’s funny?”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing Liz Allan’s ludicrously oversized penthouse office suite. Her desk sat directly across from the elevator in front of a wall of glass: floor to ceiling windows. The view of the skyline and the water beyond was so stunning it took Eddie’s breath away, momentarily.
Eddie snapped out of it, stepped out of the elevator, flanked by Frankie and Max, still bickering.
“Go,” Liz said, without looking up from her computer screen. Max and Frankie both stopped, Eddie took a few more steps, fifty percent sure she hadn’t meant him.
“Ma’am?” Frankie asked.
“Mr. Brock’s a reporter, Frankie. I’m sure he’ll be on his best behavior.”
Max cleared his throat, clearly repressing a counterargument.
“Won’t you, Eddie?” Liz asked, closing her laptop to level him with an icy-blue stare.
“My very best, ma’am,” Eddie said as honestly as he could.
Frankie grunted in disbelief, and spun on his heel, following Max back to the elevator. The doors to the elevator slid closed whisper-quiet leaving Eddie alone with the CEO of Alchemax.
Eddie crossed the last few dozen feet to Liz’s desk, realized she didn’t have a guest chair and stood awkwardly for a few seconds, before Venom, in a stroke of genius, formed a seat beneath him.
Liz raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and looked slightly more impressed than annoyed. "So your alien hitchhiker can do party tricks too now?"
Hitchhiker?
"Not a hitchhiker. A partner. But we're not here to talk about us," Eddie said, setting the duffel bag on his lap.
She gave him a steady look, and then huffed, clearly losing patience. "Okay, here's the part where you want me to ask: What’s in the bag?"
Venom pulled the zipper open with a tendril and grabbed hold of the millipede halves with two others, depositing the still-twitching halves onto Ms. Allan's expensive desk.
To her credit, she didn't so much as flinch. "You've been spelunking Mr. Brock?"
Eddie cleared his throat, "We took a visit to the sewers today. Found the most revolting walkway we've ever seen, and a whole lot of these." He inclined his head towards the millipede halves. "Mind telling me what they are, and what Alchemax is doing with them?"
"Did you reconsider my job offer, Eddie?"
Eddie scoffed. "I'd never work for you."
Good. We don't like this woman.
"That’s unfortunate. If you were on our payroll I’d throw you one hell of a commission.” She picked up a stylus and poked at the millipede half closest to her. “Nobody's been able to take one of these down. The meat under the walkway is the remnants of those who’ve tried."
"How many tried?"
"Several."
"You didn't make these things?"
"Of course not. Who do you take me for, Norman Osborne?" She chuckled.
"No, but you're just as shady. I don't trust anyone in charge of a mega-corporation. They're always hiding something." Eddie realized a second later he might've just shot himself in the foot, and hadn't even gotten to the heart of why he was here yet. But he'd gambled on Liz being used to attacks like that.
She stared him down, eyes locked for a beat before blinking, settling back in her chair, relaxed mask sliding back into place easy as anything. “We found the bugs on an excavatory probe. There are all sorts of things living beneath the city, mostly harmless. But these bugs-they don’t respond to our scanners the way organic matter should. They have no heat signature, no nervous system, no circulatory system, no biology we can comprehend. What we do know is they produce energy. Massive amounts of it.”
“That’s why you’re interested,” Eddie said, fingers curling. “You think this is what-an opportunity for profit?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s the key to clean energy. No more fossil fuels. A greener future.” She smiled, beatifically.
“Bullshit. Alchemax owns two major oil companies.”
Liz's smile thinned. “That’s right. And when our wells are empty, we need to be ready.”
“So what are these things?”
“We have theories.”
“What kind of theories?” Eddie asked, annoyance building again.
"I could bore you with the details, but my time is short, and frankly, you're not smart enough to understand the findings."
And now she insults our intelligence!
Eddie started to protest but Liz held up a hand. "More importantly, that's not really why you're here is it? You're here because of Mrs. Li Chen."
Eddie swallowed.
"You think our fronts don’t have security cameras, Mr. Brock?"
"You can't raise her rent by eighty-five percent. That's unconscionable." Eddie said with a sneer.
"Pretty typical for a megacorporation, right?" Liz folded her hands. "We need her to leave. It's for her own safety. You know how close those things are to her shop. You really want her to stay there?"
"We'll take care of them." Venom's voice echoed Eddie's.
Liz shook her head. “You can try, but I’m afraid you’re not clear on the true scope of this situation.” She opened her laptop, punched a few keys and turned it around so Eddie could see. It was a different set of blueprints, showing the sewers, the location of the nest or whatever it was and the depth of it. Several miles straight down. The image zoomed out showing the true dimensions of the nest-it spread wide in nearly every direction with projected new openings indicated all over the state.
“Shit,” Eddie admitted.
Shit, Venom agreed.
“That being said, I appreciate your concern for your neighbor. We’ll help her relocate, pay for the renovation costs-“
“She’s not leaving,” Eddie said. “She put fifteen years into that shop, she inherited it from her uncle, she lives in the apartment above.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “And based on what you just showed me, it doesn’t matter how far she moves. Those things are gonna be everywhere soon, aren’t they?”
Liz nodded grimly. “Unless we figure out what they want. Why they started burrowing up after presumably spending eons underground.”
“If I help you figure that out, will you leave Mrs. Chen and the other tenants on that block alone?”
“What do you mean by help, exactly?” Liz leaned forward, lips curving slowly.
“We’ll see,” Eddie said.
“Sorry, Eddie, but your word isn’t worth a thing to me. Are you going to sign a contract with us, or should we reach out to Mrs. Chen about relocating her store?”
Don’t want to sign, Eddie!
Me neither, but what choice do we have? Eddie grimaced and asked, “What kind of contract?”
#
"I don't understand," Mrs. Chen said, re-reading the letter. "No rent increase: guaranteed for ten years. What did you say to them?"
"I just talked things through, explained your situation," Eddie said, keeping his smile in place.
Mrs. Chen lowered her voice, so the other customers in the store wouldn't hear, and whispered. "Did you eat anybody?"
"No."
She kept staring at Eddie, clearly not convinced.
Venom flowed out of Eddie's sleeve as a very small, serpentine head and whispered. "No! We are still very hungry."
"That's good," Mrs. Chen said, finally cracking a smile. "You should go pick something out then. On the house."
"Thanks, Mrs. C."
She shook her head. "You did something, Eddie, I know you. But whatever you did, thank you."
Eddie nodded. "Just, if anything weird happens, anything at all, you call me okay?"
"Should I be expecting something weird?" she asked, suspicion returning to her voice.
"No more than usual," Eddie said, and that was the truth at least. His gut gurgled unhappily. Not just because of his-and Venom's hunger, but because the whole agreement with Alchemax had left him feeling icky. But he'd made his choice. In the end it was an easy one. He couldn't not do anything about whatever those things were beneath the streets, now that he knew they were there, and partnering with Alchemax to figure it out would be infinitely easier than trying to fight both them and the bugs. As long as he could keep his friends safe too, it wasn't a bad decision. It wasn't.
Venom grabbed a few things from the aisles as they walked through, and Eddie went for his favorite sandwich and chocolate. Mrs. Chen put everything in a bag and handed it to him with another smile and a, "Good night."
"Ugh, rain," Eddie groaned, as they stepped outside.
"Good thing you brought an umbrella," Venom said, forming a sleek black umbrella over Eddie, his head underneath the handle.
"You never cease to amaze me," Eddie said, chuckling. "How many other tricks can you do that you haven't shown me?"
"A nearly infinite number," Venom said. "Perhaps, if you ask nicely, I'll show you some more later tonight."
Eddie sighed, still feeling weird about earlier. "You're not mad at me, for signing that contract?" Even the word left a bad taste in his mouth.
"No. The powerful always try to subjugate those around them. Alchemax forced our hand. And you did what you thought was right. If they try to betray us, they will know our wrath."
"That's the spirit," Eddie said, and wrapped his fingers more tightly around Venom.
"But Eddie?"
"Yeah?"
"If we don't eat dinner soon, you will also know our wrath."
"Fair enough," Eddie said with a chuckle and hurried home.
#
author: monicawoe
word-count:~4,600
characters: Eddie Brock/Venom, Mrs. Chen, Liz Allan
genre:gen, PG-13
warnings: gore, some violence
story summary: When it appears Mrs. Chen's store has fallen prey to gentrification, Eddie and Venom investigate the new block owners and uncover a conspiracy along with a nest of problems lurking beneath the city streets.
Written for the Venom Holiday Exchange 2019 for cupidsbow.
Thanks to my beta luckyraeve!
Eddie set their purchases on the deli counter, trying to remember what he was forgetting. “Paper towels!” he said. Venom flung out a tendril and grabbed a roll from two aisles over.
“Ten twenty-five,” Mrs. Chen said, not looking at him. Her eyes were red, Eddie noticed, on further study.
“You okay, Mrs. C?”
“Fine,” she said.
“What’s wrong?” Eddie asked, quietly. Venom writhed a bit around Eddie’s back, curious.
“It’s complicated.”
“Most things are,” Eddie said, evenly. “Want to tell me about it?”
“No. It’s not your problem.”
Eddie moved a step closer, Venom gathering around his ankles, lifting him up until he could see eye to eye with Mrs. Chen. “Is somebody messing with you again? Because if they are-“
“We will show them the error of their ways!” Venom finished, manifesting their head next to Eddie’s.
“No, nothing like that,” Mrs. Chen said. She let out a huff, sniffling. “They’re raising the rent on me.”
“Oh.”
“By eighty-five percent!” she said, getting angrier. “Fifteen years I’ve been here running this shop and the rent increases have always been painful, but reasonable. But this-“
“That’s insane,” Eddie said, sympathetic.
“It’s undoable.” She shook her head. “I’ll have to close.”
“What?” Venom snarled, alarmed.
“Or try to find a new location,” Mrs. Chen continued. “But this is-it was my uncle's shop. I took over for him when he got too old and I've kept it going all this time." She paused for a moment to clear her throat. "I live upstairs, and it's a tiny little shoebox of an apartment, but it's my home. Plus, the rent in this city-I mean if you look at other storefronts, I’ve been lucky until now.” She laughed sadly and Eddie’s heart hurt just a little more.
“Who’s your landlord?” he asked.
“Eddie-“
“We will eat this lord!” Venom said, tongue lashing.
Eddie patted them on the head. “No, we won’t. Just-let me have a talk with him.”
“If it was my old landlord, I could have a talk with him,” Mrs. Chen said, throwing up her hands. “It’s a new managing agent. The building got bought up, along with everything else on the block.”
“Really?” Eddie’s concern started to branch out into professional curiosity. “By whom?”
Mrs. Chen reached behind her into a drawer and pulled out an envelope. She set it down on the counter facing Eddie and pointed at the return address. Blue Delta.
“They don’t return any calls or emails, and the one time I got somebody on the phone they told me the rent increase was non-negotiable, and that if I called again they’d take legal action!" Mrs. Chen threw her hands in the air in frustration.
Eddie glared at the envelope, focused on the sender’s address, name and logo. The triangle in between the words reminded him of something, though he couldn’t quite place what. “I’ll look into it.”
“Eddie, please. I don’t need any more trouble. Worst case I’ll try to find a storefront somewhere outside the city, maybe in Oakland."
“No!” Venom said, alarmed. “Then where will we go when we are out of food?”
“There’s other stores. Grocery stores even,” Mrs. Chen said, “with lower prices.”
“Eddie says your store is more important and your food is better.”
Mrs. Chen smiled, still sniffling. “I’ll be fine.” She handed Eddie his change and bag. “Have a good night, you two.”
“You too,” Eddie said, but his mind was racing.
#
Eddie rang the door buzzer a third time. Still nothing.
“Maybe they’re closed today,” Venom said, serpentine head stretching towards the door.
“No, this is a front,” Eddie said, crouching down to get a closer look at the door lock.
“A front what?”
“I mean it’s fake. This isn’t an actual office. Might be they have a shell corporation or something to make it all official looking but it ain’t real.“ Eddie pulled the lock pick from his pocket and set to work.
“What are you doing?”
“Breaking and entering. Hush.” The lock gave a satisfying click as it retracted and Eddie opened the door with a smug smile.
“We could have just smashed through the door.”
“Yeah and then they’d definitely know we were here.” Eddie stepped into the mostly empty office and looked around: at the very back was one desk with a phone, a laptop and a small printer. And absolutely nothing else. No sign that anyone had even been there. “Huh.”
“Seems you were right.”
“What a waste of space,” Eddie said, opening the laptop. “This is what, three thousand square foot?” He grimaced at the passcode prompt.
“Now what?” Venom asked.
“Now we hope that corporate lackeys are all still bad at passwords.” Eddie shrugged and typed in 1,2,3,4,5,6. A moment later the computer started up.
“Idiots.”
“Yup.” Eddie let out a breath and scanned the file folders. He pulled a thumb drive from his pocket and stuck it into the usb slot, then copied over everything that looked interesting.
“Is this still breaking and entering? Or does this fall under another crime?”
“Depends on what we get. Could be theft or even corporate espionage.”
“Sounds delicious.”
Eddie snorted a laugh and took the thumb drive back out. “Let’s go.”
They headed for the door, but Venom thrust out a tendril, holding the door shut. “Footsteps. Someone’s coming.”
“Shit.” Eddie looked behind him.
“Window.”
“Yeah, okay.” Eddie broke into a jog as Venom covered him, flicking out a tendril to slide open the window just before they reached it. They sailed through, Venom pulling the window shut behind them again, and landed on the roof of the building across the street.
#
“This doesn’t make any sense,” Eddie muttered. “There has to be something here they want, but there’s nothing.” He poked his finger at his laptop screen. “Just sewers.”
“Sewers are something,” Venom said. Their head swiveled as they reached out a tendril to grab another handful of potato chips. Crunching them loudly, they added, “Amf blueprints only schphow you publicly known structures.”
Eddie stared at Venom. “What’d you just say?”
“Blueprints only show what they want the public to see,” Venom said. “It's what you said three months ago when we were looking for the Raft.” Venom narrowed their eyes. “See? I always listen to you.”
“Sometimes,” Eddie conceded. “Not always.” He kissed the side of Venom’s head. “We’re better off not always listening to me.” Eddie zoomed in on the intersection of Kearny and Clay and then pulled up the same intersection on his phone’s map. “But in this case…” his eyes widened as he saw the building there.
“Allan Chemical, a subsidiary of Alchemax,” Venom read.
“Yup.” Eddie traced the triangular A in Alchemax and finally the logo of Blue Delta clicked. This was where he'd seen the triangle before.
“Are they bad?”
“Yup.”
Venom licked their lips. “Are we headed to the sewers?”
“Yup,” Eddie said, less enthusiastically.
#
They dropped down into the sewer slowly, Venom swirling down around Eddie’s shoulders and winding around his legs.
“This isn’t that bad,” Eddie said, blinking down the dimly lit corridors to the left and right. “Thought it’d smell more.”
“Your senses simply aren’t acute enough to pick up all the odors,” Venom said enclosing the top half of Eddie’s face and part of his mouth, long tongue reaching out into the darkness. “Taste the air.”
“Ugh,” Eddie said, nose wrinkling in disgust. “What is that?”
“The smell of decay,” Venom said, “and some fairly fresh viscera. That way.” They flung out a tendril, pointing to the left.
“Then we go that way.” Eddie rolled his shoulders back, as Venom enclosed them fully.
The length of tunnel was empty for a good stretch but soon opened up into a larger arching passage, abnormally large for a sewer system Eddie thought. They turned, still following the smell, which grew stronger the further down the hall they got. The corridor changed as they went on, solid stone changing suddenly to metal grating. The stench was coming from directly below them; Eddie crouched down and looked through the grates, Venom’s enhanced visual spectrum letting him see details he wished instantly he hadn’t. Whatever was beneath the grating appeared to be meat-intestines, chunks of bones and other messier things. Some bits were moving, seemingly of their own volition, which made Eddie want to hurl and also jump away. But he was on a case, and it had just taken a sharp turn into the seriously weird. What the hell?
“Theses organs were not recently harvested, but they’re being...preserved somehow,” Venom said, reaching a tendril down to poke at one of the rippling bits of intestine.
Don’t touch it! Eddie thought frantically.
“We will learn a lot more if we do,” Venom said, nudging the intestine experimentally. It writhed again and a flicker of electrical charge ran through it. “Interesting.”
Interesting. And super super gross.
“We’ve eaten worse than this. You have eaten worse than this.”
Not helping.
“The movement is a vestigial peristaltic wave. Not alive. There’s no consciousness, no mind behind what it’s doing.”
I would hope not. And what’s a peristaltic wave?
“What your intestines do when they’re digesting.”
Lovely. Where’s the electricity coming from?
“Good question.” Venom lashed with their tongue, scenting the air. “That way.” They broke into a run and skidded to a halt when the walkway suddenly stopped, broken off as though something had torn through it-or burned through it-they thought, studying the smooth concave shape of the metal at the end. They peered down but saw nothing but darkness. There were no lights here, and even Venom’s enhanced vision wasn’t strong enough to see into the pit below.
They leapt up from the walkway, a good thirty feet high and grabbed hold of the upper stones of the archway, suspended upside down so they could look straight down and then began to lowering themselves.
I hate this. A lot.
“We have no choice. We must go where the story takes us.”
Why did you have to start listening to me today?
“There.” Venom pointed down, eyes narrowing as they caught a spark of light below them.
What...what is that?
Venom lowered them a few more feet, but their mass was stretched to the limits, unraveling from Eddie’s body until his legs and part of his arms were exposed, along with some of his face.
“Shit.”
“We will not drop you.”
“No, I mean, oh shit,” Eddie said, pointing. Because something was moving below them-something fast, sparking with a strange blue glow. The same lightning he’d seen in the flesh above.
Venom closed their eyes, focusing on sound, amplifying it until Eddie too could hear.
“What is that?”
“Feet. Legs. Thousands of them.”
“Feet?”
Venom leapt suddenly, as an arc of lightning shot towards them. “They’ve seen us.”
Eddie would’ve asked who, but didn’t need to. The dark hole around them lit up blue from one second to the next as dozens, then hundreds of giant glowing millipedes came rushing up the sides of the pit, all of them crackling with electricity.
“Shit. Oh shit oh shit.”
“Yes. Close your eyes.” Venom retracted their tendrils suddenly, immediately yanking them up, using their tendrils like a cross between a grappling hook and a bungee cord.
Eddie felt like he was going to puke, but didn’t, consoling himself instead with the secure warmth he felt once again surrounded fully by his other.
The comfort was fleeting. One of the giant millipedes had scurried all the way up and with a jolt of electric blue flew off the wall, hurtling right towards Venom.
They dodged its pincers, and caught it, holding its writhing body as far away from their body as they could without losing leverage.
“Fascinating,” Venom said. “We cannot bond with this.”
Why would you want to?
“To understand it.”
It doesn’t seem to want to understand us! Eddie thought furiously as the millipede whipped its body around again, pincers coming dangerously close to Venom’s eyes.
“We should not consume this,” Venom said.
Agreed. Any other ideas about how to stop it?
Venom let go of the millipede’s tail with one hand and grabbed it closer to the midsection, then twisted violently until it came apart with a loud echoing snap. Both halves sparked bright blue and then went limp. Venom held one half up until it caught the wan light from above; its insides were an odd jello-like texture, translucent green, and its spine looked silver, almost like it was made of metal.
Venom pulled up on their tendrils and swung them towards the catwalk of horrors, but just as it was in reach, a forcefield of some kind flashed into view, a dome, made of that same electric blue, that fit perfectly against the cut half circle in the walkway. Venom didn’t seem affected by the field at all, but the millipede reacted instantly, both halves coming back to life, whipping about ineffectively. “Very strange,” Venom said as they landed.
There-on the wall! Eddie hadn’t noticed it on the way in, but there was a small metal plaque mounted at the start of the walkway. They moved closer and read, ALCHEMAX. Gotcha. Eddie had crossed paths with Alchemax before and unfortunately wasn’t even that surprised they were involved in this mess. Alchemax didn't have a building in this area until recently. Not exactly prime real estate for big corporations, not even their subsidiaries. Figured they had something else going on.
"Something they're trying to hide."
Exactly. Let’s go where the story’s leading us.
“Agreed,” Venom grumbled, and ran quickly towards the sewer entrance.
#
"We need to look presentable," Eddie said rolling his shoulders awkwardly as he glared into the bathroom mirror. He'd changed into his best suit but it fit poorly, too tight across the shoulders, too loose at the waist.
Take off the jacket.
"It's not that bad. I can't go see a corporate bigwig without one."
Take off the jacket. I have an idea.
"Sure, why not," Eddie said with a sigh and took off the jacket, tossing it back on the bed.
Venom streamed over his white button down shirt, becoming paler, the same shade of charcoal as Eddie's nice Armani slacks-one of the last gifts from Anne that he'd worn to nearly every fancy wedding or event they'd had to go to. The symbiote shimmered and undulated, contracting around Eddie's shoulders neck and waist in the shape of a jacket. An impeccably tailored expensive-looking jacket; a perfect match.
"Very nice," Eddie said, thoroughly impressed. "We could save a ton of money like this."
And buy more chocolate?
"Exactly." Eddie patted his bicep squeezing Venom in thanks. "I had no idea you could do that."
We can do all sorts of things together.
"For now," Eddie said, grabbing his keys and the duffel bag he'd stashed the mostly-dead millipede in, "let's follow this story together, and help Mrs. Chen."
#
"Do you have an appointment?" the receptionist asked. He looked bored and clearly already knew what Eddie's answer would be. Alchemax headquarters was in the largest, fanciest skyscraper San Francisco had to offer, and thanks to the gleaming freshly polished floors of the lobby, Eddie still felt underdressed despite the herculean effort Venom had made to polish up his duds.
"No. But Ms. Allan will want to see me," Eddie countered, with his most charming smirk.
"Ms. Allan is extremely busy, sir. She doesn't see anyone without an appointment."
"Oh I think she'll make an exception for me," Eddie said, and nudged Venom mentally, who flowed out and around Eddie's jaw just enough to widen his mouth and sharpen his teeth.
The receptionist paled. "Who should I say is calling?"
"Eddie Brock."
Pleasant expression plastered back into place, the receptionist tapped his headset and said, "Ma'am there's a Mr. Brock here to see you. He has...quite the winning smile." He kept his eyes glued to Eddie, and nodded after a moment. "Use her private elevator, last one on the right.”
Eddie headed where the receptionist had pointed and found the private elevator, easily identifiable by the two brick house sized guards wearing sunglasses and headsets. Eddie walked up to them and cleared his throat. “Ms. Allan’s expecting me.”
Without a word, the two guards stepped aside as the elevator opened and followed Eddie inside.
Great. “How far up is office?” Eddie asked, trying to make conversation.
The guards didn’t answer, looking for all the world like animated bodybuilder mannequins. Or maybe animatronics.
“Top floor? She met me in a conference room last time.” Still nothing. Eddie let out a breath between his teeth that came out as a soft whistle.
I have an idea.
Don’t piss them off.
Why not?
Not looking for a reason to get kicked out before we even see her, we’re here to figure out the story, and help Mrs. C. Eddie jostled the duffel bag lightly and the thing inside twitched slightly. Still alive. One of the guards took notice, his head turning a fraction of an inch towards the bag.
Venom took the opportunity to shoot out a wire-thin tendril, straight at the tip of the other guard’s ear. He flinched, slapped his hand at it and glared first at Eddie who ignored him, standing there as innocently as he possibly could, and then looked at his cohort, big head turning slowly in accusation.
The elevator was only at floor thirty-three. Twenty-eight left to go.
After a long second, the guard turned his head back to the front and Venom repeated the trick, this time flicking him in the neck. “Knock it off you little prick,” he snarled.
“Who me?” Eddie smiled up at him and turned so he was facing them, as Venom surreptitiously threaded another tendril along the floor. “What’d I do?”
The tendril poked the guard in the ribs, and there was clearly no way Eddie could have reached him from where he was standing. The guard’s gears creaked and he turned towards his partner, face gone red. “Knock it off Frankie!”
Frankie shrugged. “Wasn’t, me, Max.”
To underline his point, Venom poked Frankie in the back, making him flinch. “What the hell?” Now Frankie’s face had gone red too. “You think that’s funny?”
The elevator dinged and the doors slid open, revealing Liz Allan’s ludicrously oversized penthouse office suite. Her desk sat directly across from the elevator in front of a wall of glass: floor to ceiling windows. The view of the skyline and the water beyond was so stunning it took Eddie’s breath away, momentarily.
Eddie snapped out of it, stepped out of the elevator, flanked by Frankie and Max, still bickering.
“Go,” Liz said, without looking up from her computer screen. Max and Frankie both stopped, Eddie took a few more steps, fifty percent sure she hadn’t meant him.
“Ma’am?” Frankie asked.
“Mr. Brock’s a reporter, Frankie. I’m sure he’ll be on his best behavior.”
Max cleared his throat, clearly repressing a counterargument.
“Won’t you, Eddie?” Liz asked, closing her laptop to level him with an icy-blue stare.
“My very best, ma’am,” Eddie said as honestly as he could.
Frankie grunted in disbelief, and spun on his heel, following Max back to the elevator. The doors to the elevator slid closed whisper-quiet leaving Eddie alone with the CEO of Alchemax.
Eddie crossed the last few dozen feet to Liz’s desk, realized she didn’t have a guest chair and stood awkwardly for a few seconds, before Venom, in a stroke of genius, formed a seat beneath him.
Liz raised a perfectly plucked eyebrow and looked slightly more impressed than annoyed. "So your alien hitchhiker can do party tricks too now?"
Hitchhiker?
"Not a hitchhiker. A partner. But we're not here to talk about us," Eddie said, setting the duffel bag on his lap.
She gave him a steady look, and then huffed, clearly losing patience. "Okay, here's the part where you want me to ask: What’s in the bag?"
Venom pulled the zipper open with a tendril and grabbed hold of the millipede halves with two others, depositing the still-twitching halves onto Ms. Allan's expensive desk.
To her credit, she didn't so much as flinch. "You've been spelunking Mr. Brock?"
Eddie cleared his throat, "We took a visit to the sewers today. Found the most revolting walkway we've ever seen, and a whole lot of these." He inclined his head towards the millipede halves. "Mind telling me what they are, and what Alchemax is doing with them?"
"Did you reconsider my job offer, Eddie?"
Eddie scoffed. "I'd never work for you."
Good. We don't like this woman.
"That’s unfortunate. If you were on our payroll I’d throw you one hell of a commission.” She picked up a stylus and poked at the millipede half closest to her. “Nobody's been able to take one of these down. The meat under the walkway is the remnants of those who’ve tried."
"How many tried?"
"Several."
"You didn't make these things?"
"Of course not. Who do you take me for, Norman Osborne?" She chuckled.
"No, but you're just as shady. I don't trust anyone in charge of a mega-corporation. They're always hiding something." Eddie realized a second later he might've just shot himself in the foot, and hadn't even gotten to the heart of why he was here yet. But he'd gambled on Liz being used to attacks like that.
She stared him down, eyes locked for a beat before blinking, settling back in her chair, relaxed mask sliding back into place easy as anything. “We found the bugs on an excavatory probe. There are all sorts of things living beneath the city, mostly harmless. But these bugs-they don’t respond to our scanners the way organic matter should. They have no heat signature, no nervous system, no circulatory system, no biology we can comprehend. What we do know is they produce energy. Massive amounts of it.”
“That’s why you’re interested,” Eddie said, fingers curling. “You think this is what-an opportunity for profit?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s the key to clean energy. No more fossil fuels. A greener future.” She smiled, beatifically.
“Bullshit. Alchemax owns two major oil companies.”
Liz's smile thinned. “That’s right. And when our wells are empty, we need to be ready.”
“So what are these things?”
“We have theories.”
“What kind of theories?” Eddie asked, annoyance building again.
"I could bore you with the details, but my time is short, and frankly, you're not smart enough to understand the findings."
And now she insults our intelligence!
Eddie started to protest but Liz held up a hand. "More importantly, that's not really why you're here is it? You're here because of Mrs. Li Chen."
Eddie swallowed.
"You think our fronts don’t have security cameras, Mr. Brock?"
"You can't raise her rent by eighty-five percent. That's unconscionable." Eddie said with a sneer.
"Pretty typical for a megacorporation, right?" Liz folded her hands. "We need her to leave. It's for her own safety. You know how close those things are to her shop. You really want her to stay there?"
"We'll take care of them." Venom's voice echoed Eddie's.
Liz shook her head. “You can try, but I’m afraid you’re not clear on the true scope of this situation.” She opened her laptop, punched a few keys and turned it around so Eddie could see. It was a different set of blueprints, showing the sewers, the location of the nest or whatever it was and the depth of it. Several miles straight down. The image zoomed out showing the true dimensions of the nest-it spread wide in nearly every direction with projected new openings indicated all over the state.
“Shit,” Eddie admitted.
Shit, Venom agreed.
“That being said, I appreciate your concern for your neighbor. We’ll help her relocate, pay for the renovation costs-“
“She’s not leaving,” Eddie said. “She put fifteen years into that shop, she inherited it from her uncle, she lives in the apartment above.” He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. “And based on what you just showed me, it doesn’t matter how far she moves. Those things are gonna be everywhere soon, aren’t they?”
Liz nodded grimly. “Unless we figure out what they want. Why they started burrowing up after presumably spending eons underground.”
“If I help you figure that out, will you leave Mrs. Chen and the other tenants on that block alone?”
“What do you mean by help, exactly?” Liz leaned forward, lips curving slowly.
“We’ll see,” Eddie said.
“Sorry, Eddie, but your word isn’t worth a thing to me. Are you going to sign a contract with us, or should we reach out to Mrs. Chen about relocating her store?”
Don’t want to sign, Eddie!
Me neither, but what choice do we have? Eddie grimaced and asked, “What kind of contract?”
#
"I don't understand," Mrs. Chen said, re-reading the letter. "No rent increase: guaranteed for ten years. What did you say to them?"
"I just talked things through, explained your situation," Eddie said, keeping his smile in place.
Mrs. Chen lowered her voice, so the other customers in the store wouldn't hear, and whispered. "Did you eat anybody?"
"No."
She kept staring at Eddie, clearly not convinced.
Venom flowed out of Eddie's sleeve as a very small, serpentine head and whispered. "No! We are still very hungry."
"That's good," Mrs. Chen said, finally cracking a smile. "You should go pick something out then. On the house."
"Thanks, Mrs. C."
She shook her head. "You did something, Eddie, I know you. But whatever you did, thank you."
Eddie nodded. "Just, if anything weird happens, anything at all, you call me okay?"
"Should I be expecting something weird?" she asked, suspicion returning to her voice.
"No more than usual," Eddie said, and that was the truth at least. His gut gurgled unhappily. Not just because of his-and Venom's hunger, but because the whole agreement with Alchemax had left him feeling icky. But he'd made his choice. In the end it was an easy one. He couldn't not do anything about whatever those things were beneath the streets, now that he knew they were there, and partnering with Alchemax to figure it out would be infinitely easier than trying to fight both them and the bugs. As long as he could keep his friends safe too, it wasn't a bad decision. It wasn't.
Venom grabbed a few things from the aisles as they walked through, and Eddie went for his favorite sandwich and chocolate. Mrs. Chen put everything in a bag and handed it to him with another smile and a, "Good night."
"Ugh, rain," Eddie groaned, as they stepped outside.
"Good thing you brought an umbrella," Venom said, forming a sleek black umbrella over Eddie, his head underneath the handle.
"You never cease to amaze me," Eddie said, chuckling. "How many other tricks can you do that you haven't shown me?"
"A nearly infinite number," Venom said. "Perhaps, if you ask nicely, I'll show you some more later tonight."
Eddie sighed, still feeling weird about earlier. "You're not mad at me, for signing that contract?" Even the word left a bad taste in his mouth.
"No. The powerful always try to subjugate those around them. Alchemax forced our hand. And you did what you thought was right. If they try to betray us, they will know our wrath."
"That's the spirit," Eddie said, and wrapped his fingers more tightly around Venom.
"But Eddie?"
"Yeah?"
"If we don't eat dinner soon, you will also know our wrath."
"Fair enough," Eddie said with a chuckle and hurried home.
#