Dirty Little Secret

Collision - Peter

A/N: This is a short one but only because the next few chapters will be longer!

-N

---------------------------------------------------

"Yeah, that's him."

Peter looked down at the lifeless face of Dr. Ferguson. His body was covered in a plastic white bag, the zipper pulled down to reveal his face. Ned and Peter stood inside the morgue where they had stored Ferguson's body. The place reeked of bleach and death and Peter could hear Ned trying not to gag behind him.

"What happened?" Peter asked the coroner. The badge on his coat identified him as Dr. Hill.

"That's still a mystery," he mentioned as he zipped the bag even lower. "There are no stab wounds or bullet wounds that would indicate a potential murder weapon." Ferguson's chest was covered in black splotches, veins trickling in the direction of where his heart used to be.

"And he has no family?" Ned added. "We can't be the only ones to have known him."

"You were the last two to have seen him apparently, so you count at being able to identify him," Dr. Hill looked up, pushing his squared spectacles up his nose, "But no, no family. No relatives, either."

"So how did he die?" Peter continued.

The coroner pressed his lips into a thin line. "I'm not supposed to be sharing this information with you, to be honest." He eyed them curiously and then shrugged. "My best guess is this," he pointed towards the splotches. "I've taken samples but the cells are all dead and they're not even cells I could recognize. If I could describe it in any way I would say that whatever killed him... it's not part of this world."

Peter felt every nerve in his body wake up in alert.

"His mouth was filled with the same substance. Asphyxiation could've been another cause of death. Both lungs and heart were completely covered with it," he continued. A phone began to ring and the coroner reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. "I have to take this. I'll be right back and please," he pointed at the body, "don't touch anything."

He left the medical room, leaving Ned and Peter alone with Ferguson's body.

"You think that thing killed him?" Ned voiced Peter's thoughts.

"It's the only thing that makes sense," Peter sighed and finally willed himself to look away from the blank expression on Ferguson's face. He turned and faced Ned instead. "Don't you think it's curious that he had no one? How did he even get the symbiote?"

"He mentioned that it was being studied in San Francisco. Maybe he worked for them and wanted to continue studying it?" Ned guessed.

Peter looked back at the body. He didn't know exactly what to feel. He had admired Dr. Ferguson in the little time he and Ned had worked for him. He was new to the science program in the university but Peter always felt like he was part of something bigger. He never expected for that something to be the cause of Ferguson's death.

"I have to find where that thing came from and what exactly it's looking for," Peter muttered. He looked at the splotches on Ferguson's chest. They looked like someone had thrown small balloons filled with ink at him. He recalled what Dr. Hill had said. "His organs were rotted with that stuff. Whatever it was, it was killing him from the inside out."

Ned stepped to stand next to him and swallowed loudly. "The symbiote got to him. That's how he escaped the lab."

Peter frowned but nodded. "Remember when you said that maybe it was dying? He used Ferguson as his host and took whatever he could to stay alive."