=Venom=

Venom 5

    Ana answered the door when they arrived to game night. “Hey, I’m glad you two could make it. Dan was just setting up the food and refreshments.”
The night turned out to be more fun than expected. They started off with a game of Uno, then Taboo, and finished with Clue.
    “In college we had to redesign a board game as part of a project, me and my partner did this one.”
    “Really? How did you redesign it?”
    “We changed it into a children’s game and based it off ‘Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?’.”
    “Murder mystery to cookie thief.” Laughed Dan.
    “Is that what you do? Design games?” Asked Ana.
    “No, I do artwork for different media projects.”
    “She just did a comic book not too long ago.”
    “Comic book?” Dan looked surprise.
    “It was pretty cool.” Said Eddie, shooting her an admiring glance. “She’s got a lot of talent.”
    Brie blushed slightly and played her turn. “I know who it is. Scarlet in the hall with the axe.”
    Dan opened the envelope. “You got it.”
    “And how did you figure that out?” Say Eddie scratching his head confused.
    “If I tell you, I’ll have to kill you.”
    They all sat around after the game and chatted before finish in their drinks and leaving opting to do it again soon.
    Brie got on the back of Eddie’s bike and they rode off back to their apartment building. She got off and removed her helmet.
    “Were you trying to catch all the red lights?” She giggled while shaking out her hair.
    “I just wanted to keep your arms around me a little longer.” He says putting his arms around her and giving her a quick kiss.
    “You in a hurry to get to bed?” She asked.
    “Depends…will you be joining me?”
    “I was thinking about making up for that movie we missed the other night.” Smiled Brie.
    “Sounds good to me. Under the condition you keep your arms around me until we get to my apartment.”
Brie wraps her arms around him from the back and follows him up to his place.
    “Someone sure has been quiet.” Brie mentions, taking note of Venom’s awkward silence.
    “He’s trying to give us space.”
    “That’s sweet. How about some popcorn with our movie?”
    “Extra butter.” Growled Venom as Eddie unlocked the door. Eddie looked back at Brie who sat on the couch grinning. Food was always a good way to coax Venom out of hiding.
    Eddie gets up halfway through the movie to go to the bathroom, Brie pauses it. She gets up and walks to the hallway closet to get a blanket. When he gets back, she’s curled up underneath waiting to press play.
  “You cold?”
  “I was fine until you left me.”
  “You naked under there?” Eddie slides his hand under the blanket and starts feeling for her clothes.
    “No.” She laughs, kicking him away playfully. Brie gave him a sexy smirk and that was all it took for him to get under the blanket with her. She opened her legs, giving him a place to lay his body down. Brie placed one hand on his shoulder while the other pulled him down for a kiss. When he sat back up Brie’s sexy grin had faded.
  “Eddie…” Brie nervously looked at him. He felt the side of his neck and pulled out a small tranquilizer dart. He looked to the window on his right where he thought it originated and 5 red beams were targeted on him. Before either could react, Venom emerged, flipping the couch where they were laying over onto its side, shielding them from the onslaught of bullets that came through the window.
  “What’s going on?” Brie screamed.
  “I don’t know. You have another boyfriend I should be worried about?”
  “No!”
  “I need to get you out of here.”
  “You’re coming with me...”
  “They’re obviously here for me, not you.”
  The gunfire came to a halt.
  “You need to go. Find Ana and let her know what’s going on.”
  “What?”
  “If I don’t make it to Ana’s…”
  “What do you mean if you don’t make it?” Brie’s eyes were wide and worried. He wasn’t sure what was going on, but he wished she hadn’t been caught up in whatever it was. A grenade came through the window and he knew she had to move fast.
  In what felt like seconds, Venom encased Eddie’s body, reached across the apartment to open the door and flung her out, just before the grenade went off. She watched the blast knock Venom off his feet. Brie hurried down the hall. The elevator was coming up from the first floor, she was certain it was whomever was after Eddie, so she turned to take the stairs. She could hear heavy footsteps quickly coming up the stairs as she entered the stairwell. The fire alarm echoed and blared through the building.

  Armed men wearing black tactical gear with “ARCHER” patches repelled into the windows just after the grenade. Venom grabbed two of the men and tossed them right back out of the windows they came through.
    Brie ran to her fourth-floor apartment and locked the door. Those men had to of been spying on her and Eddie and would more than likely be keeping an eye out for her, walking out of the front door wasn’t an option.

    The men who went after Eddie were dealt with easily enough. Venom dangled the last of them in the air by his leg.
    “Bravo team. Delta team is entering the 4th floor in search of target two.” Radioed a soldier.
    “Brie…” Venom hisses and tossed the man to the side cracking his head on the kitchen island. Not wanting to risk being seen, Venom climbed out of the window and scaled the outside wall to Brie’s apartment.

    Brie cracked her apartment door and spotted the men coming off the elevator. She immediately locked it and pushed a kitchen chair under the handle. Brie ran to the window and climbed onto the fire escape. The extraction team breached the door and found the apartment empty. One of the men peaked out of the window and spotted her.
    “She's heading for the roof!”
    Two men followed her on the fire escape and the rest took the stairs. Brie had been to the roof several times while painting. The building was connected to two others that were used for office space. If she could make it across the roof of the buildings she could use the fire escape on the last one to make it to the street away from the crowed streets surrounding the apartment.
    She made it onto the roof just as the access door flung open. She ducked behind an air conditioning unit and tried to keep quiet.
    “We know you’re up here Ms. Thompson. We’re here to help you. You've no reason to be scared of us…My name is Nathan Rice…”
    Brie cautiously peered from around the unit trying to keep an eye on the men. She spotted six.
    “She doesn’t need your help.” Said Venom climbing onto the roof. The men drew their guns at him.
    “Sure she does. Does she know what your kind would do to her?”
    “I am not like 'My Kind’. I am ‘One of a Kind’.”
    “That’s not completely true now is it? There’s a whole planet of your kind out there.”
    Another team of six made their way onto the rooftop and surrounded Venom. Brie took advantage of their interaction and slowly made her way to the other building. Just as she crossed onto the roof of the first adjoining building, she was spotted.
    “Over there!”
    Venom growled ferociously and went into a frenzy as several of the men chased her down. He bulldozed through the ones standing in his way as he tried to stop them from reaching her. Bullets were flying everywhere. One struck Brie in the shoulder just as she reached the fire escape. The impact caught her by surprise and she lost her grip on the railing. Venom impaled the soldier responsible for the shot and flung him out of his way.
    “Throwing Concussion!” Yelled Rice, hurling the grenade. The men dropped down and shielded themselves from the blast. The loud “bang” had been reconstructed and intensified to disorient the Symbiote.
    Venom stretches down grabbing Brie’s arm just as the sound echoed through the rooftops. He broke slightly away from Eddie as Brie began to slip.
    “Go…” Groaned Eddie who was trying his hardest to maintain control of Venom, but he knew they wouldn’t both make it. Venom relinquished Eddie and Brie fell six stories into the ally.
Eddie stumbled to his feet as the men detained him. They looked down into the ally way and saw no sign of Brie.
She didn’t know how she survived the fall at first. The wind had been knocked out of her and her shoulder was bleeding.
    “Get up! We must go!” Said Venom.
Brie jumped to her feet and looked around. “Venom….?”
    “We must move!” She could hear his voice resonating in her head.
    They made their way out of the ally and onto the street. A large crowd had gathered outside to see what was going on, allowing her to blend and get a safe distance away.

    “I don’t remember how to get to Ana’s.” Brie was out of breath.
   “Leave that to me. You are out of shape.”
   “Excuse me?”
   “We need wheels. That one.” Venom spotted a black BMW parked at a parking meter.
   “I’m not stealing a car. I don’t know how to steal a car.”
    “I do.”
    Brie nervously approached the vehicle and noticed 2 tickets on the window.
    “We are doing him a favor. It will be towed anyway.” Venom unlocked the door and Brie apprehensively got in.
“You know how to drive or do I have to do that too?”
    “I can drive.” She responded with an attitude, just before pulling off. “Why did you leave Eddie?”
    “He told me too. I couldn’t hold onto the both of you once that grenade went off. High pitch sounds waves are a weakness of mine.”
    “So what are they going to do to Eddie?”
    “Probably torture him. Turn left and make a right on Newton.”
    Brie nervously gripped the wheel. She tried not to think about it but all she could do was picture Eddie bruised and bleeding on the floor of a basement somewhere.
    “You are scared.”
    “You're damn right.” She tried to fight back tears. She didn’t know what Ana and Dan could do to help. She just wanted to get there fast.

    “Brie?” Ana knew when she saw her something was wrong. She pulled her inside and yelled for Dan.
Dan walked into the living room and saw Ana with Brie.
    “What happened?” Asked Ana.
    “Some men came for Eddie?”
    “What?”
    “Let me take a look at that shoulder.” Insisted Dan.
    “She is fine.” Snapped Venom.
    Ana and Dan looked at each other.
  “You have Venom?” Asked Ana suspiciously.
  Brie nodded. “He bonded to me just before they took Eddie.”
  Dan noticed her hands trembling. “I’m going to get you a glass of water.”
  “Who were the men?” Ana wanted to know exactly who was responsible.
  “They had patches on their uniforms that said ‘Archer’.”
  “Like…Archer Aeronautics?”
  “Yea.”
  Ana sighed. “After Carlton Drake died, someone raided his labs before officials got in. Venom wasn’t the only Symbiote that came back, but he was the only one who survived and successfully paired with a human. Drake knew Eddie had Venom, and we assumed that somewhere in the data that was stolen his name would come up.”
  “They think Eddie still has Venom.”
  “And when they find out he doesn’t…” Dan hands her the water.
  “They’ll come for you.” Confirms Venom.