It had been weeks since San Francisco went back to normal—or at least as normal as it could get when you shared your body with an alien symbiote who never shut up. Eddie Brock had learned to live with Venom. Mostly. Between the late-night chicken hunts and the constant internal arguments, they had somehow built a rhythm.

A strange one, but it worked.

Venom still insisted on hiding when they were outside. He could stretch beneath Eddie’s skin, voice rumbling only inside his head. When Eddie spoke out loud, Venom could hear and answer him mentally—but the rest of the world couldn’t. That was their secret language, their uneasy truce.

But tonight, Venom was restless. There was someone he wanted to find.

Eddie had heard the name before—your name—murmured somewhere between hunger and memory. You had been one of the few scientists at the Life Foundation who didn’t treat Venom like a weapon or an experiment. You had defended him, tried to stop the others from hurting him. And for that, they had fired you.

Now, standing outside your apartment door, Eddie wasn’t sure how to even begin explaining this. That the creature you’d once tried to save was living inside him. That it remembered you. That it wanted to thank you.

“This is a bad idea,” Eddie muttered under his breath. Inside his mind, Venom’s voice growled, impatient and eager “She's going to remind me and she will like us. Stop being afraid.”

“Afraid? I’m not—hey, don’t you dare—”

Before Eddie could finish, a black tendril shot from his sleeve, curling toward the doorbell. The sharp ding echoed down the hallway.

Eddie froze. “...Great."