"Huh…?"
Felix blinked. He…he didn't feel like he was standing anymore. Was he falling?
"Huh—?"
The world came back in pieces. Sound first, then pressure, then pain. So much pain it felt abstract, like his body had been replaced with a diagram someone had scribbled over in red ink.
He was on the ground.
Felix sucked in a breath and immediately regretted it. His lungs burned. His throat tasted like copper and ozone. He coughed and something wet splattered against the stone.
Blood.
"…okay," he rasped, voice barely there. "Okay. Still… still here."
His fingers twitched. His left arm didn't respond at first, then did, sluggishly, as Extremis finished knitting something back together that very much should not have been torn apart. His right knee screamed when he tried to move it, but it held.
Felix rolled onto his side with a grunt and pushed himself up, shaking violently, armor fragments scraping against stone as they magnetically dragged themselves back into place where they could. The Mark X was a ruin. Half its surface area was gone or half-regenerated, nanofluid struggling to maintain cohesion. A fist-sized hole yawned at his waist, edges glowing faintly.
Dust was everywhere. He coughed. In front of him—
"Still alive, doctor…good."
Bruce lay sprawled on his back, limbs slack, chest rising and falling shallowly. Green had almost completely drained from his skin, leaving him pale, bruised, and human. That was the most important thing.
Felix staggered forward despite everything in his body screaming not to. He dropped to one knee beside Bruce and realized his left lens was broken. Dammit.
"Herbie, scan him."
Immediately, translucent overlays bloomed across Felix's lenses.
VITAL SIGNS DETECTED.
SUBJECT: BANNER, BRUCE.
STATUS: UNCONSCIOUS.
GAMMA RADIATION: DORMANT. NON-CIRCULATING.
The readings scrolled.
GAMMA PATHWAYS DISCONNECTED. NO ACTIVE TRANSFORMATION LOOP.
His plan had worked. Next up: "Run deeper scans. Neural. X-ray."
AFFIRMATIVE.
The overlay shifted. Felix's lenses peeled back skin and bone, layers sliding away into a stark wireframe of Bruce's skull. Brain tissue lit up in ghostly hues—electrical activity, dormant but present.
Then Felix saw it.
Nestled deep within Bruce Banner's brainstem, threaded impossibly between neurons and synapses, was a shape that did not belong. A thin, black filament writhed, branching and retracting like a living thought. Microscopic tendrils hooked into neural pathways, pulsing faintly, greedily.
Felix felt ice crawl up his spine.
"…no," he whispered. "No, no, no."
He zoomed in.
The thing reacted.
Tiny pseudo-cells contracted, tightened, as if aware it was being observed. Herbie's analysis populated the edges of Felix's vision.
FOREIGN ORGANISM DETECTED.
COMPOSITION: UNKNOWN BIOPOLYMER.
BEHAVIOR: NEUROPARASITIC.
CONTROL PATHWAYS: MOTOR CORTEX, LIMBIC SYSTEM, AMYGDALA.
"A symbiote," he said hoarsely. "A designed one. No wonder it could control the Hulk…!"
This thing was precise. Surgical. Built to override. His thoughts snapped back to Harold's words. To Gwen Stacy. To Harry Osborn's shadow hanging over all of it.
"Harry Osborn developed this?" Felix murmured, disbelief threading through the pain. "For… for Gwen?"
He slowly looked up, scanning the ruined chamber. The Red Goblin was gone.
Felix clenched his jaw. Harold had never intended to stay. This had been a demonstration. Proof. A city-breaking chess move meant to show him the board.
This parasite—this control mechanism—it wasn't meant for Bruce.
It was meant to be replicated. Felix's stomach twisted. A chill thought followed immediately after.
'Where is he now? What is he planning to do with this Symbiote?'
Felix dragged his gaze back to Bruce. The man's face was slack, vulnerable. Unaware of the thing crawling through his mind.
He had to remove it.
Before Bruce woke up.
Before the Hulk came back.
Before—
Felix sucked in a sharp breath and nearly collapsed as pain lanced through his side. He clutched at the ruined armor, teeth gritted.
"Nngh—!"
Extremis flared, struggling to keep up. His vision blurred. He forced it back into focus.
"I can't… do this alone," he muttered.
He swallowed and reached inward.
"Rash," Felix said, aloud and inside himself. "Rash, I need you."
Nothing. No presence. No familiar hum at the back of his thoughts. Fear crept in, slow and unwelcome.
"R-Rash…?" His voice cracked despite himself. "Come on. This isn't funny. I need you."
Silence. Felix pressed a hand to his temple, panic beginning to bleed through the pain. "You can do this. You can— you've done neural surgery before."
Still nothing.
His breathing quickened.
"Where are you?" he demanded weakly. "Where—"
The world went black.
—
…
…
Felix was standing on both legs. He was uninjured, he realized.
He stood in a vast, endless dark, like the inside of a living void. The ground was liquid and the sky was pitch black, like oily shadows.
The sky itself, the darkness, it thickened and shaped into something he knew well. A black face with angular white eyes.
"Rash…?"
He had become the sky itself. This…this couldn't be real. This had to be an illusion. Yes, yes, this was the same realm Bast took him inside. A spiritual realm of some sort.
But…when did Rash grow so large?
This wasn't a slick, half-formed silhouette. This Rash encompassed the heavens, turning it into his face. The black musculature possessed tendrils that caused ripples in this reality.
Rash radiated hunger.
Rash radiated certainty.
Felix took an involuntary step back.
"…Rash?"
The thing leaned down, filling his entire vision.
"WE… WANT TO KILL GWEN STACY."
His mouth opened and his words imprinted themselves into Felix's mind. His heart lurched.
"What—? What did you just say?"
"WE…NO, RASH WILL KILL GWEN STACY."
Cold flooded him.
"Have…have you lost your mind? That's not— that's not happening. Ever. It's not you and it's not…it's not what she deserves! Rash, come on!"
The symbiote rippled. "WE'VE LEARNED SO MUCH TOGETHER.WE HAAAVE. BUUUUUT… WE CANNOT BE MORE WITH HER."
Rash's form shifted, tendrils weaving images into the dark—of them killing Gwen Stacy and seizing her Symbiote for themselves.
"No. What are you—why? Why?"
Louder and stronger than ever before, Rash's voice boomed: "YOU SAW. YOU HEARD. HUMANS WILL NEVER ACCEPT US SYMBIOTES. AND THAT DEVIL GOBLIN…HE WILL NOT ACCEPT IT ABOVE ALL OTHERS. HE WILL CONTINUE TO USE US AS SLAVES. AND YOU…" There was a long, knowing pause. "YOU WON'T KILL HER…WILL YOU?"
Felix swallowed.
"WE KNOOOW EACH OTHER. WE KNOW YOUR MIND AND YOUR MEMORIES—"
"And I know yours. I know you've been watching me. You've learned from me. So you know this is wrong to just kill her. I just—I just learned she's being controlled! Gwen hasn't done anything wrong yet, we can save her!"
"WE HAVE LEARNED KINDNESS. WE HAVE LEARNED HATE. WE HAVE LEARNED WHEN IT IS RIGHT TO KILL. WE….WILL ALWAYS LOVE EACH OTHER. BUT THAT WOMAN, YOUR SISTER, SHE HAS BECOME SOMETHING FAR TOO MUCH FOR US. RASH…RASH FEARS HER MORE THAN WE LOVE YOU." Rash's echo pressed in from all sides. The Symbiote was coming to an understanding based on primal instinct and fear. "SO RASH WILL END HER. FOR US."
"No!" Felix grabbed his skull. "Rash, stop—!"
The void tore.
"FEEELIIIX, RASH LOVES YOU! RASH WILL RETURN TO YOU! BUT…AFTER RASH KILLS HER WITH THE MIGHT OF THE HULK. OF THE STRONGEST THERE IS."
Felix felt something rip away from him.
"RASH loves you. RASH looooves you—!"
He screamed.
—
Back in the chamber, Felix convulsed. It felt like he was experiencing a stroke, eyes rolling back as black tendrils erupted from his ears and eyes. Any hole, any gap, it was used to leave. Rash the Symbiote tore free like a fleeing serpent, slithering across the stone toward Bruce Banner's unconscious form.
Felix's Mark X screamed warnings.
FOREIGN SYMBIOTIC SIGNATURE DETECTED.
MERGING EVENT IN PROGRESS.
WARNING. WARNING. WARNING.
He saw the whole process and he couldn't do a thing about it. The tiny parasite in Bruce's brain reacted to the presence of the new Symbiote. It met Rash.
They fused.
Rash took over.
Bruce Banner's eyes snapped open. They were not green.
NEW STATUS: BRUCE BANNER DECEASED!
They were black. Rash had killed Bruce Banner himself in order to take control of his corpse and to use the power of the Hulk. A roar tore from his throat as the Hulk returned, muscles swelling, bones cracking, gamma radiation reigniting—but this time, it flowed in perfect, obedient patterns. Veins blackened. Shadows clung to his skin like oil.
"No…no, Rash…!"
Something worse than the Hulk and Rash emerged.
Felix barely had time to look up before a massive, symbiote-wrapped fist slammed into him. The impact erased the world. Felix flew, smashed into stone, consciousness shredding under the blow. His vision tunneled, flickering.
Through dimming lenses, he saw it.
"RASH IS SORRY! YOU…RASH KNOWS YOU WILL HEAL, FELIX. RASH LOVES YOU…"
The monstrous black figure leapt away, vanishing into the depths above. Felix lay still, barely breathing, blood pooling beneath him.
"Rash…Gwen…" he whispered, before the darkness finally took him.