[Piper Parker's POV]
'SAVE SHANE!'
I've never experienced strength like this before. Every muscle in my body feels electrified, my senses dialed up beyond their normal heightened state. The world around me seems to move in slow motion as I swing through Manhattan's concrete canyons, trailing behind Venom's massive form.
'KILL OSBORN. RIP HER APART.'
The symbiote's scent-tracking abilities are our only hope right now. After the Goblin took Shane, Venom went completely feral, more animal than human. I'd be terrified if I weren't feeling exactly the same way.
"Faster!" Venom roars ahead of me, her massive form swinging with reckless abandon between skyscrapers. "We're getting closer!"
I push myself harder, shooting web lines with perfect precision, my body moving with an efficiency I've never known before. The anger burning inside me isn't the controlled, channeled rage I usually direct at criminals. This is primal, visceral, a molten core of fury that makes everything that's come before feel like a mild annoyance.
'TEAR HER LIMB FROM LIMB. MAKE HER SUFFER.'
Morning sunlight glints off glass towers as we race northward. Below us, early commuters point upward, probably shocked to see Spider-Woman and Venom swinging side-by-side rather than trying to kill each other. If they only knew what united us.
Tears stream down my face beneath my mask, hot and furious. Every time I blink, I see Shane's face as the Goblin carried him away the way he reached out toward us. It wasn't just heroic duty that made my heart shatter in that moment. It was something deeper.
'FIND HIM. PROTECT HIM. OURS.'
We swing around the corner of a glass tower, and I follow Venom's trajectory perfectly. My body feels impossibly light, my reflexes operating at a level I've never experienced. It's like my spider powers have been amplified by the rage coursing through my veins.
Venom slams down onto the docks ahead of me, landing with such force the concrete cracks beneath her massive form. I release my web and drop down beside her.
Something's wrong. Venom doesn't move. She stands frozen for a moment, those blank white eyes scanning the empty shipyard. Then she lets out a scream that chills me to my core, a sound of pure anguish that echoes across the water.
"NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!"
Her massive fists pound the concrete, each impact sending spiderwebs of cracks spreading outward. Chunks of dock break free and splash into the water as her rampage continues.
"What the fuck happened?" I demand, grabbing her massive shoulder.
She whirls to face me, those terrifying white eyes widening as she takes me in. Something in her posture shifts, surprise replacing rage for just a moment.
"What the fuck happened to you?" she growls, her dual-layered voice vibrating with confusion.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS SHANE?" I scream, panic overriding everything else.
"HE'S FUCKING GONE!" Venom roars back, her massive jaws snapping inches from my face. "THE SCENT ENDS HERE!"
I slam my fist against the ground in frustration, surprised when the concrete craters beneath my blow. "What the fuck do you mean the scent is gone?" My voice sounds strange in my ears, somehow fuller, more resonant.
Venom shakes her head violently, tendrils whipping around her form as she begins to shriek, a high, keening wail that tears through the morning air. Something inside me responds, a vibration that starts in my chest and spreads outward. My skin bubbles and shifts, and suddenly I'm screaming too, my voice joining hers in a terrible duet that echoes across the empty docks.
That's when I finally understand. I look down at my arms, watching in horror as Maroon tendrils ripple across my skin, forming patterns identical to Venom's. The symbiote. It's on me. In me.
"How...?" I gasp, staring at my hands as they transform before my eyes, red and blue giving way to inky blackness.
Venom's massive form stills, those blank white eyes studying me as I stare at my transformed hands.
"It divided," she says, her voice eerily calm after her earlier frenzy. "During the explosion on the rooftop. I felt it... tear."
The realization hits me like a physical blow. When Shocker's blast separated Ellie from her symbiote, when the bomb hit, that's when it must have happened. A piece of the alien lifeform must have found me in the chaos.
"Get off me," I hiss, clawing at my arms where the maroon substance pulses and writhes. "I don't want this!"
'NO!'
The voice reverberates directly inside my skull, bypassing my ears entirely. It's nothing like when I wore the symbiote before, that time it was just a mindless costume, a tool I could use. This feels sentient, aware... hungry.
'WE NEED YOU TO FIND SHANE! WE SHARE A COMMON GOAL!'
"I don't care! Get off!" I tear at the living darkness coating my skin, but it flows around my fingers like water, impossible to grasp.
'WE SHARE LOVE FOR THE SAME MAN.'
My hands freeze mid-motion. The statement hits me with unexpected force, cutting through my panic. The symbiote knows. It can feel what I feel, and I can feel what it feels.
Venom watches me struggle, her massive head tilting with what might be curiosity. "What's it saying to you?"
"It... speaks to me," I manage, still reeling from the intimate invasion. "It never did that before, when I had it last time."
'WE MULTIPLIED. AND NOW THERE IS YOU AND I.'
I take a deep breath, feeling the alien presence settle against my skin, into my pores, becoming one with me in a way that should be horrifying but somehow... isn't. It responds to my emotions, to my desperate need to find Shane.
"Fine," I whisper, surrendering to the inevitable.
The maroon symbiote undulates across my body with what feels distinctly like pleasure, like a cat purring against my skin.