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They sprinted through the open steel door. The hallway stretched before them with fluorescent lights flickering overhead, casting sickly green illumination across walls stained with symbiote matter. Symbiote hosts prowled the corridor in unnatural patterns exactly like before.
None of them reacted.
The two thieves cut through their midst, weaving between shambling bodies that couldn't hear their breathing or talking, or even feel the displaced air of their passing.
They reached the V-Section entrance.
The prison spread before them in two levels of architectural horror.
Glass cells lined both floors, each one containing a half-bonded symbiote host. The prisoners were in various stages of transformation—some with symbiote matter covering just an arm or leg, others with tendrils spreading across torsos. All of them were in agony.
These dissected fragments of Venom hadn't developed enough consciousness to trigger a proper bond. So their hosts existed in perpetual limbo—aware of the alien matter writhing inside them, but unable to complete the merger or reject it entirely.
In the center of each cell stood electrode arrays. Every few seconds, they would discharge arcs of lightning through prisoner and symbiote alike, forcing the symbiotes to develop a consciousness through the intense emotions of their host. The screams of agony were muffled by thick glass.
Nothing was different from yesterday's astral reconnaissance. If anything, the reality was worse.
Felicia's hands curled into fists. "Norman bought weak, diseased prisoners. Dad… he went through this too."
He placed a hand on her shoulder, comforting her. "We'll save him."
She put her hand over his, still gritting her teeth. "It won't be for nothing. I'll rip him apart with my claws."
"He will be strong. Are you sure you can handle him?"
Dante didn't even consider Norman a threat. Only a minor inconvenience. The real threat were the symbiotes he had amassed in who knows how many facilities across the states.
"I'll let you beat him up for me. That's what lovers are for." Felicia relaxed after a few moments. "How are we doing this?"
His lips curled up in a smirk. "Smash."
"You smash." Felicia extended her claws with a sound like knives being unsheathed. Each nail stretched into a curved talon, looking wickedly sharp. "I'll slash."
She had already used her acceleration ability before the words left her mouth. She crossed ten feet in a second and swiped her claws. Sharp lines appeared on the reinforced glass, showing just how sharp those claws were. It was still a mystery how her body even produced them on their own.
The symbiote host on the other side reacted immediately.
He was old, mid-sixties at least, with a weathered face and gray beard. Prison tattoos covered muscular arms that had clearly seen decades of hard labor. But his eyes still held intelligence and humanity, even with black symbiote matter creeping across the left side of his face. The symbiote coverage was almost cosmetic—an indication that he had arrived recently.
The old man threw himself at the damaged glass. He wasn't trying to escape so much as he was trying to do something other than endure another hour in hell.
Felicia slashed the same spot again and again with insane precision.
The panel fell inward in a cascade of fragments.
The old man lunged through the opening like a caged animal finally freed.
"RAAAAGH!"
Symbiote tendrils exploded from his shoulders, his back, his arms, lashing out at everything within reach. One wrapped around a metal cart and flung it at the researchers. Another slammed into a wall, leaving a crater of pulverized concrete.
"What—how is he out?!" A young researcher in a hazmat suit stumbled backward, visor fogging with panicked breathing.
"The glass broke? HOW?!" Another one nearly tripped over his own feet. "HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?"
"HE BONDED ALREADY? THIS IS WAY TOO QUICK!"
They were flustered getting caught off-guard, but they weren't incompetent.
"Activate containment protocol!" One researcher yelled. "Get the stun batons!"
Five of them regrouped quickly and grabbed stun batons from wall mounts. The high-voltage stunned and drove the old man to the ground, twitching and spasming.
Felicia wasn't even watching the prisoner she had just freed. She stood there, marveling at the sharpness of her genetic claws. Even the process of awakening them felt great, unlike the process of ripping her muscles over and over with workout.
She turned to Dante, and he could see the naked gratitude in her expression. A wordless thank-you sometimes meant more than a hundred spoken ones. Then she pivoted, already hunting her next target.
Dante, well, he didn't take the traditional approach of brute strength. Three force fields materialized in the air, each shaped them like a battering ram. The translucent battering rams slammed into the reinforced glass.
The first impact made the center buckle inward, cracks spreading from it as the center.
The second strike turned those ripples into fractures.
The third blow shattered everything. The glass exploded inward in a glittering storm of fragments. The destruction was beautiful, like watching a crystal chandelier fall from a ceiling.
Dante hadn't bothered suppressing the sound this time. The more noise, the better.
Three battering rams struck three cells at a time and freed three prisoners in three seconds.
The scientists abandoned their stations, staring at the prisoners being freed by the shimmering weapons.
"W-who's there?"
No one answered. Just more glass exploding and more prisoners escaping.
One of them suddenly dropped to his knees, hands clasped like he was praying to heavens. His face behind the visor was ecstatic as tears flowed from his eyes.
"It's the Lord," the man sobbed. "I knew He would hear us. I knew He wouldn't abandon us down here."
"Praise God," another scientist collapsed beside him, sobbing. "All those nights, he heard us. He's come to free His flock."
A woman in a hazmat suit stared up at the ceiling. "Thank you… Thank you, thank you, thank you…"
"Get up," someone else hissed. "Show some respect. Don't look at Him directly. Bow your heads. Bow your heads!"
More joined them. Men and women in hazmat suits, forced to torture and watch people torn apart day after day. They had prayed to be saved in silence. Now, they thought God had finally answered.
"He's real," one whispered, almost in disbelief. "After everything we've done... He's still saving us."
"You all are ridiculous. It's just some invisible guy," one retorted, committing the crime of opposing the masses. "We have seen aliens. Norman mind-controlling them. Why can't someone have the power to, I don't know, become invisible?"
"This heathen," the woman growled and pushed to the ground, tearing his hazmat mask. The bloodlust in her eyes was like she would strangle him to death. "Question Lord, and I will beat you to death with my stun baton."
"Yes, yes. Don't question," another laughed through tears. "Just accept it. Just accept that He's here."
The only logical person was suppressed and threatened.
Dante didn't know whether to laugh or cry. They thought God was saving them, but in reality, it was Death's boyfriend—the furthest being from their god.
The irony would've been funny if they didn't look so miserable.
Felicia stopped to stare at the scene from the second floor. "How many powers do you have?"
"Too many to count." Dante turned to address the kneeling, broken scientists. "All of you, get into one cell. Let me protect you from these monsters." He smirked. "Your words of faith are meaningless. Only by virtue and kindness will you wash away your sins."
If they were going to treat him as God, he might as well use it to make them obey.
"Yes, Lord!" They scrambled to obey, stumbling over each other in their haste to reach the nearest cell. Someone fell and was helped up by two others.
"We shall follow your light!"
"His mercy shines upon us!"
Even the skeptics, who were holding onto reason, folded after hearing Dante's voice. Fear made believers of them all. When the universe stopped making sense, faith was the only refuge left.
They piled into one cell like refugees.
Dante created a force field around their cell before gathering mystic energy to cast a protection ward. Part of him wanted to let the force field drop, let them pay the price for trading rational thought for blind faith. But it wasn't entirely their fault. Norman had pushed them until their minds cracked and sought comfort in the divine. Dante couldn't respect how easily they'd bent. But he also wouldn't let Felicia witness their deaths.
Felicia had already returned to destroying cells on the second floor. One cell at a time, each one falling after four slashes.
He destroyed three at a time—
—and a sudden, sharp pain stabbed through his mind. It was brief enough to not affect his concentration.
'Still not used to this mental strain.'
He focused even more and smashed these prison cells at a faster rate. The pain faded to a dull throb centered behind his eyes. While he was doing that, the symbiote hosts from the hallways had arrived to contain the escaping prisoners. They all moved in an organized way, most likely being controlled by Norman.
An epic brawl started.
The prisoners' symbiotes hadn't developed a consciousness that Norman could control from a distance. Norman's only option to stop these rebels was to use other symbiote hosts. It was also why Dante had chosen prisoners for the distraction method.
Soon, every single prisoner was set loose. Some prisoners tried hitting the protection ward, but it didn't break even with their best efforts.
"We are safe."
"Norman can't touch us anymore. We're under Lord's protection!"
"His Light will shine upon us forever!"
The frenzied worship made Dante want to dispel the invisibility and shout that he wasn't their god, but that would hardly accomplish anything. They had already surrendered the one thing Norman couldn't take: their ability to think for themselves.
He watched the prisoners assist their fellow rebels in fighting the Norman controlled symbiotes.
Dante turned away from the chaos, scanning the second floor for Felicia.
"Darling, catch!"
He looked up just in time to see her standing on the second-floor railing, one foot on the narrow metal bar and her arms spread wide like she was about to swan dive.
She didn't hesitate. She jumped.
Her body arced gracefully through the air as she plummeted toward concrete twenty feet below with a smile on her face.
Dante moved on instinct and positioned to catch her, his mind unconsciously running calculations. He immediately concluded the impact would be like getting hit by a bike speeding at around 20mph.
His reinforced skeleton could handle it, but a normal person would suffer heavy injuries.
It was a great thing neither of them could be counted as ordinary.
She dropped into his chest, and he took a step back to dissipate the force.
"That felt amazing." Felicia laughed and rubbed her cheeks against his, like a cat expressing affection. "Trusting others is so nice."
The girl crushed under guilt and fear was gone. This was the adrenaline junkie who chased after danger like a drug. The cat burglar who leaped off skyscrapers because it made her feel alive. Now that her father had a real chance at survival, she had gone right back to dancing on the edge of disaster. Safety was boring—and boring wasn't her way of living.
'Black Cat is officially back.'
She jumped down from his arms then straightened her back, only to have her smile die. Delight was replaced with horror. "You're bleeding."
"What?" Dante reached up, confused for a half-second because the pain in his head had normalized.
His fingers came covered in red.
Both of his nostrils were bleeding. The blood trickled over his lips and dripped off his chin..
"Shit, I'm reaching my limit."
Sue Storm's power was extraordinary, but his mental strength wasn't enough to fully utilize it. Something had to give. Right now, that something was blood vessels in his prefrontal cortex swelling and bursting under pressure.
Felicia already had a handkerchief out from her duffle bag and pressed the cloth to his face. She wiped away blood while avoiding his nose. She turned the cloth and brushed his lower lip and his chin with the clean part.
He found her quick change quite amazing. It only took her a second to go from adrenaline junkie to concerned lover.
"Let's hurry," she whispered. "I know you won't die… I just don't want to see you bleed."
***
They sprinted through the corridor and arrived at the vault door. The reinforced steel with a digital lock planted on it.
"Darling, give me thirty seconds."
From her duffel bag, Felicia pulled out a sleek device wrapped in copper coils and multicolored writing with a small display and keypad. The magnetic counter-field generator she had passionately raved about in Smokie's. She pressed it against the vault door's lock panel and adjusted the settings.
Electric blue and violet light flashed around the keypad on the vault.
"Reading... reading... got it." Her fingers danced across the interface as she inputted parameters. "Initiating override."
The copper coils glowed brighter and generated cascading waves of pink, green, gold over the vault's surface. The red lock indicator flickered before completely dying out.
The locks disengaged with a heavy CLUNK.
"Twenty-three seconds." Felicia pushed the vault with a finger, and the massive steel frame moved a couple centimeters. She pulled the device and tucked it back into her bag gently like it was something precious. "I'm getting better at this."
"That counter-field theory you explained actually made sense now that I've seen it work." He gave her a thumbs up. "Good job."
"Right?" Her eyes lit up behind her mask. "The magnetic resonance frequency has to match exactly or the whole thing is dead. It's precision—sorry for nerding out when we're running low on time."
"You should go over it when my head isn't throbbing."
He already had plenty of knowledge swimming in his head. Adding more would be great to expand his horizons. Besides, he would rather endure hours of Felicia gushing over random things than see another moment of her depression.
Felicia's smile widened into something softer. Then she turned and pushed the vault door properly open.
Dante stepped inside after her, closing the vault door behind so nothing would seem out of place for any curious symbiote. The vault seemed to be airtight, isolating any sound from going outside without the use of his force field.
This massive vault wasn't meant to store but dissect and terrorize an alien being.
And in the center, exactly where they had seen it in their astral forms, stood the containment vessel. A massive glass cylinder elevated on a pedestal. Inside, pressed against the walls, was the symbiote.
Venom, probably. Dante doubted this thing even had a name without Spider-Man or Eddie's involvement.
And it was still being tortured.
Four robotic arms moved in coordination. One stabbed into the symbiote's mass. Venom recoiled, tendrils writhing. Another arm sliced, harvesting a chunk of living tissue.
The severed piece desperately crawled on the glass floor, trying to reunite with the main body.
But a third and fourth robotic arms intercepted it and passed it through a sealed port.
And then it started over. Stab. Slice. Harvest. Repeat.
"I wouldn't survive this long," Felicia whispered, pulling out her glass cutter gadget. "Give me five minutes to break it open."
He placed a hand on her shoulder, gently moving her aside. "Destroy the surveillance and then knock those guys out. I'll take care of this."
The eight or ten researchers around the area hadn't even paid attention to the fact that nobody stepped inside after the vault door opened. Still, it was better to not let them see Felicia's face.
"Darling, the second we break that glass, it's going to come straight for you. It's been tortured for months, maybe years. It's going to be vengeful."
"I can handle it."
Felicia studied him for a moment, then nodded slowly and extended her claws. "Alright. But if that thing tries to eat you, I'm slashing it off. Nobody will possess you on my watch. Nobody."
"I'm not that weak."
"I know." She reached, fingertips brushing his chin where blood had dried on his skin. "But you always do this for me—us. Why shouldn't I?"
She had enough of being protected. With her new abilities, she had something to protect him instead.
"I know." He moved her hand. "Go. You're wasting time."
"Rich coming from the guy who made a stop to grope my ass." She laughed and ran off.
"It was worth it," he whispered to himself before approaching the containment vessel. Up close, it looked even more durable. The glass was reinforced with so many layers that it was stronger than most metals.
He tapped the glass experimentally with one knuckle and shook his head.
'Force fields won't work.'
Right now, he couldn't handle the mental strain of brute forcing with force fields.
So he watched Felicia methodically plant small chips on every surveillance device, which he recognized as a video loop injector. The device would record thirsty seconds of normal footage and begin feeding a looped version to the security system while the timestamp continued ticking forward.
Once she took care of the surveillance, she went wild. The civilian researchers didn't even know what hit them as they fell to the ground, unconscious. She just put them down, one after another, until the vault was empty of conscious witnesses.
Making her invisible, sound-free, and scent-free was like giving her wings. Honestly, her new abilities made her a perfect assassin.
"Null, end Sue Storm link and start Elixir's link."
[Permission acquired.]
[Level 4 Resonance Link created with Elixir (Joshua Foley).]
The moment his invisibility faded, Venom reacted. It abandoned any attempt to avoid the robotic arms and lunged at Dante, smashing itself against the wall. The blade stabbed through Venom, it didn't recoil this time. It pressed harder against the glass, tendrils spreading wide.
Venom was desperately hoping for Dante to save it.
"Let's get you out of there."
***
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