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The moment Dante's invisibility fell away, the world seemed to notice him again and so did she. Death's mask slid back over his face, like it had just been waiting for an excuse to return.
"You'll need it for what's above," Death said in his mind. Her voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once, sitting in the back of his skull and somewhere out beyond the stars.
"Just say you like seeing me with this."
"I absolutely do," she said with a chuckle. "It would've been your face if it didn't make you stand out."
"Felicia doesn't like it though."
"I'll adjust it for her. She'll see you like she usually does." She took a brief pause. "Silvija too."
Her response made him blink in surprise. He had braced for something cold and dismissive or something jealous. Instead, she seemed openly accommodating for Felicia and reluctantly for Silvija. "Death, are you… trying to get along with them?"
"Felicia doesn't fear death or me," she begrudgingly admitted. "So… I don't hate her."
"That's so sweet of you," he murmured. "When are you coming back properly? If you stay like this, you'll end up as just the mask lady."
"I miss you too," she said, softer than before. "But… not now. We'll talk later."
Dante let the conversation go for now. He turned his attention inward and pushed his perception deep. His body unfolded for him down to the cellular level. First, he fixed the damage that caused bleeding earlier. He reinforced the weakened blood vessels, reduced inflammation in the neural tissue, and performed some enhancements on neurons. It wouldn't prevent the strain entirely, naturally, but he would be able to use the force fields without pain for a while.
Then he focused on the real thing—rewriting his body for raw power. He started with the muscles. Fibers tightened and packed together, layer after layer compressing until each bundle held three times the density it had a minute ago. Strength went up, but the flexibility went away with it; every gain had a price. His tendons were reinforced to a carbon-fiber level of toughness. His skeletal structure thickened. His skeletal structure became dense and heavier.
Next came the engine that had to drive all of it.
His cardiovascular system was kicked into a higher gear. Heart walls strengthened, valves reshaped to seal cleaner and push harder, and arteries were widened by fractions of millimeters to transport more blood. Capillary networks in his limbs expanded, trying to keep up with muscle tissue that now demanded triple the oxygen.
His shirt tightened across his shoulders, protesting as his frame bulged. Every step carried a little more weight. He felt heavier but also slower.
And it still didn't feel enough.
He connected to the Helio Reactor embedded in his chest and let the Solar radiation flood his system, empowering every cell and amplifying the biokinetic modifications.
His hands clenched into fists as he felt the unstoppable power running through them. By his own math, his baseline lifting capacity sat around 900 pounds after the optimization. The structural overload state he had just triggered tripled that. The solar boost riding on top stacked another rough factor of three.
'A bit over three and half tons of lifting power.'
Plenty to break what he needed broken.
"Felicia, stay back."
She didn't argue when she saw him overload his body to such a degree and moved to the vault entrance. There was a curious yet mischievous light in her eyes as though calculating how she could use his ridiculous power for fun and pleasure.
Dante turned back to the containment unit. The symbiote inside seemed to sense the change in him. Its mass pressed harder against the inner surface, tendrils reaching for him like a drowning man seeing a hand extended over the water. It saw a perfect host, and it wanted him.
He pulled his right arm back. Solar radiation concentrated in his shoulder, his elbow, his wrist, and his knuckles.
With a groan, he smashed his fist into the glass.
The sound was apocalyptic. The glass didn't just crack; it detonated in a shower of crystalline fragments. Shards embedded themselves in the walls, the ceiling, and the floor. The pedestal cracked down the middle and collapsed.
A few shards hit his face, which he easily healed with Biokinesis.
Venom was free. The symbiote surged forward and grasped Dante's outstretched fist with its tendrils.
"Darling, watch out!" Felicia's warning came a moment too late.
The symbiote had latched on his hand. It felt cold like plunging his arm into arctic water. Venom climbed up his forearm, wrapped around his bicep, and spread across his shoulder. He felt it trying to burrow beneath his skin.
Venom was desperate to remove its 'powerless' status. So desperate it had turned a blind eye to the fact that Dante had freed it from its torment.
Felicia approached him, intending to slice venom with her claws. He stopped her with a shake of his head and gestured to her to stay away.
Dante calmly stood there as the symbiote merged with his arm, and its consciousness pressed against his own. Venom wasn't gently trying to bond with him, it was invasively burrowing, trying to sink tendrils into the deepest parts of his mind. Trying, in its own frantic way, to make his body its new home.
Venom didn't speak in words, but jammed its feelings together and shoved through his mind in one shove.
PAIN-RAGE-HUNGER—NEVER AGAIN.
The intent behind it was so sharp it almost made him flinch.
"Do you really want to go down this path?" Dante asked, more tired than angry.
Venom stopped just flooding him and spoke in a more coherent way, "For years just pain. We screamed. Begged. No mercy. No end. They made fragments from me. Hundreds of pieces. Each one controlled by HIM. The stolen piece of ourselves turned against me."
Dante saw the white room again, but Norman was standing before Venom, watching with a twisted smile.
"I learned. Partnership is lie. Kindness is lie. Trust is lie. Only domination survives. Only strength matters. Never again. NEVER AGAIN. NO MORE WEAKNESS. NO MORE TRUST. WE TAKE. WE DOMINATE. WE SURVIVE."
The symbiote spread toward his face, trying to seal itself over his skull to complete the bond to establish dominance and take complete control.
"Is this how you want to repay your savior?"
The symbiote's advance hesitated.
"SAVIOR?" Venom twisted the word in contempt. "NO. YOU'LL BETRAY TOO. THEY ALL DO. BETTER TO DOMINATE FIRST. BETTER TO CONTROL. TAKE YOUR BODY. MAKE IT MINE BEFORE YOU TURN ON ME."
The hesitation vanished. Tendrils snapped forward and wrapped around his throat, spreading across his jaw.
Dante sighed. "You leave me no other choice."
He had tried to reason, but Venom wasn't thinking clearly; it was acting out of a wound so deep that fear and instincts had drowned everything else.
He stripped away the biokinetic enhancements and gave a command to his system.
'Deactivate Elixir's Resonance Link. Activate Death's Resonance Link.'
[Level 2 Resonance Link created with Death.]
He quickly pulled Death's presence before it affected Felicia and focused it on the symbiote clinging to him.
Venom recoiled violently. "NO. NO. NO NO NO NO!"
The symbiote's tendrils ripped themselves off his throat. It tried to flee back, to go anywhere that wasn't near whatever Dante had just become.
Dante's hand shot out and closed around a fistful of its mass. His fingers sank into its slimy form, and where he touched, Venom's black surface turned gray, then pale, then almost translucent, as if life was being drained from it.
"WHAT ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU WHAT ARE YOU—"
"Listen carefully," Dante said. "You don't abuse the kindness of your savior."
The symbiote howled. It never reached his ears, only a transmission of pure terror and confusion directly in his head.
Venom had spent hundreds of years drifting through the cosmos. It had witnessed stars collapse and civilizations fall. Venom thought it understood death.
It had just been ignorant.
The presence that suddenly emanated from Dante wasn't killing intent or bloodlust. Those were emotions a symbiote could comprehend and even feed on. Every single cell in Venom's body suddenly knew that it would end one day. There was a line somewhere in its future with its name on it, and beyond that line there was nothing.
And the being holding Venom could drag that line forward whenever he wanted.
The symbiote writhed in his grip, desperately trying to get away, but the death aura had clamped down on it. There was no escape.
"SORRY. DIDN'T MEAN—DIDN'T UNDERSTAND—PLEASE DON'T."
What it felt wasn't pain. It had become used to pain after years of the same routine in the lab.
This was existential horror.
For the first time in its long existence, Venom felt true fear.
"I could end you right now with one thought. Do you think I'm lying?"
"NO. YOU ARE NOT. PLEASE NO PLEASE NO I'LL OBEY WE'LL OBEY JUST PLEASE—"
"Since you don't want to die, here's what's going to happen."
The symbiote sagged in his grip, utterly silent except for minute trembling, like prey that had stopped fleeing because flight was pointless.
"You'll follow my rules. Or I won't just kill you. I'll make you mortal and live every single moment like you're dying. And then I'll extend that lifespan for centuries, so you can spend every single moment dreading the inevitable."
The symbiote's terror reached a new pitch. Because that wasn't a threat. That was a promise.
"WE UNDERSTAND WE UNDERSTAND PLEASE NO MORE…"
Felicia, still pressed against the vault entrance, whispered, "Jesus Christ, Darling..."
Dante didn't look at her. "Obey me, and you'll live. Get on my arm."
Venom started to move again, but all the aggression was gone as it wrapped itself around his forearm as a tiny patch of alien matter.
"YES. YES. ANYTHING. JUST PLEASE... PLEASE NO MORE DEATH. CAN'T FEEL THAT AGAIN. CAN'T. WOULD RATHER BE HARVESTED FOREVER THAN FEEL THAT AGAIN."
Dante suppressed his death aura, letting Venom breath freely.
"I'M SORRY… DIDN'T WANT TO… I SEEK PARTNERSHIP. NOT DOMINATION."
"No, I'm going to become your host. I don't need you."
"BUT WE WEAKEN…"
"You just tried to take over my body. Why should I give a fuck about you?"
"Didn't mean to," Venom spoke softer now. "Thought survival meant control. Kindness was weakness."
He felt remorse through the connection. The symbiote had been broken by months of torture, had learned all the wrong lessons from Norman's torture, and had defaulted to the only survival strategy it could conceive: dominate or be dominated.
"Will stay weak." The thought came small, pleading. "Must recover, reclaim."
"Can't just call those fragments back?"
It would solve all of his problems at once.
"NO." A wave of shame rolled through the link. "Lost control. Sovereign too powerful. Control is strong."
"You're just useless then."
"I-I bond for power." More shame was felt as it fumbled for words to explain its competence. "Both the host and I gain strength."
"I'll think about it."
Dante released Death's Resonance Link.
'Null, what's Death percentage at?'
[9%. The understanding of human anatomy as well as many causes of deaths through different organ failures broadened your understanding of death.]
His lips twitched. "Jesus."
No wonder maintaining the link for a minute had left him with a small headache. He shifted to Elixir's link and fixed the damage.
'Can I lower the percentage of links?'
[Affirmative, I can nullify extra Resonance power through Universe-X.]
He groaned. 'Not again.'
Felicia rushed to his side. "What the hell was that?"
"Negotiation." He looked down at Venom, still docilely coating his forearm. "It won't obey nice guys after what it went through."
"I would've just destroyed it," Felicia growled, glaring daggers at Venom. "The audacity to possess him after we did all this to save you. What an ungrateful scum."
More shame was transmitted as Venom squirmed. "I apologize."
Dante laughed. "Forget about him. Before we leave, Felicia, can you destroy that robo equipment?"
Venom transmitted a feeling of gratefulness. "Thanks. Human."
Felicia leaped gracefully and sliced the robotic arms from the base before stomping them to bits. She may have started on his order, but she was grinning cheerfully venting her frustration out on the metal.
"Call me Dante. What's your name?"
"None. We don't need names. Telepathy is everything."
"Then let's fix that. How about Venom?"
"Venom? Why?"
"Because venom can kill or cure depending on dose and application. You were used as poison, now I'll use you as an antidote to this Sovereign infection."
The symbiote—Venom—rippled with pleased surprise. "WE ARE VENOM."
Dante smiled beneath the skull mask. "I'll work you like a slave."
Venom seemed happier rather than angry despite Dante's crude wording. "Anything better than torture."
Felicia, who had vented enough, returned to his side. "Happy?"
"HAPPY," Venom replied in his stead, though its voice never reached Felicia. "Black and white lady nice. Carrying my fragment too. Reclaim it?"
"Don't you dare eye Felicia or take back Agony," Dante warned. "I'll help you recover other fragments except two. They stay with me."
There was a brief, instinctive flash of resentment. Then fear smothered it.
"We understand," Venom answered quickly, knowing disobeying Dante, who held complete control over its fate, would end badly. "Dante has GOOD MATE."
Dante stared at Felicia. "Venom is calling you my mate."
"You named it Venom?" She paused, catching up to his last words, and an amusing smile covered her face. "Mate is such a… raw word, though it suits the whole pack thing Silvija has going for her mercenary club."
There was nothing odd about the name since Wild Pack was established by Silvija's father to hunt down Nazi war criminals.
Dante reconnected to Sue Storm's link to become invisible and slowly opened the vault to see if Norman had sent anyone to guard it. Well, it turned out it wasn't just one but three symbiote hosts standing guard.
All three were ready to gang up on any one who dared to lay a hand on Venom. This revealed a crucial detail others might have missed at the moment.
'Norman can't control or know what's happening to Venom. He can only control lesser symbiotes made from Venom.'
It sounded about right. Venom was quite a strong abnormality even among Klyntar natives.
One symbiote host had a white skull on his muscular symbiote body, the symbiote covering him like heavy-plated armor. He carried heavy machine guns in both arms.
Frank Castle aka the Punisher.
The second was leaner. A bow formed from black matter rested in his hand. A quiver was fused to his back, all arrows enhanced by symbiote matter.
The second was a lean symbiote host with a bow and arrow.
Clint Barton aka the Hawkeye.
Dante's brow furrowed. Hawkeye and Punisher as Norman's puppets made no sense. Hawkeye had the support of SHIELD while Punisher wasn't the type to bend under someone's rule.
The third host made Felicia go still.
"Dad…"
He squeezed her hand. "Do you want to save him?"
The scenarios played out in his head. His invisibility had a time limit, and he still needed to keep the strain limited to build platforms up the elevator shaft. These three hosts weren't fodder. They were top-tier fighters with symbiote even without symbiote buffing them. Fighting them would be impossible without using a symbiote countermeasure or his Death Resonance.
Even if he killed them, every symbiote in the facility would feel it. Norman would know Venom had been stolen and send every single symbiote to this research facility. Right now, he wasn't in the condition or remotely prepared to take on thousands of symbiote hosts.
Felicia stared at the twisted version of her father. Dante saw the war in her eyes, the desire to free the old man from this possession.
She looked at him, gaze flicking to the dried blood on his chin from earlier.
"Not today."
"Why?" Even though he had expected such an answer, he wanted to hear her reason.
"We still have to climb up," she said in a firm voice. "I don't want to see you bleed more."
Her staunch answer made him smile. She chose his safety over guaranteeing taking back father, the man who defined everything in her life.
They squeezed through the door right as all three faced away from him then quickly closed the vault shut. Sound and vibrations were muffled in the force field. All three powerful symbiotes had no idea the precious object they were meant to protect had already snuck away with two thieves right under their noses.
Feeling an intense gaze on his back, Dante looked over his shoulder. Hawkeye and Punisher stared right where he was, their eyes narrowing like they could see him.
'Their instincts are insane.'
He picked Felicia in his arms and made a run for it, not stopping until he had completely left the section.
Only then did he let her down and took a sigh of relief.
'Their reputation isn't for nothing.'
Felicia glanced back one last time.
"I'll come for you later, Dad," she whispered. "It's a promise."
He patted her shoulder. "I'm going to accompany you. That's my promise."
***
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