Instincts drag you forward like a marionette carved from feral code—left, not right; asphalt, then grass. Central Park's skeletal trees rise ahead, their branches clawing at a bruised November sky. Not sanctuary, but a stage. Close enough for the city's heartbeat to taunt you, for the stink of Peter's guilt and Fury's lies to linger in your sinuses. Good. Let them taste the proximity of what they'll lose.

You halt at the edge of the Ramble, lungs burning with the metallic tang of ozone and your own betrayals. The transformation begins not with pain, but sound: a wet, seismic crack as your femur splits, elongating into a grotesque spear of cartilage and keratin. Muscles writhe like serpents beneath your skin, your spine curving into a serrated ridge that parts the air with a blade's precision. When the Indominus rex form locks into place, your claws sink knuckle-deep into frozen soil, the earth itself recoiling.

Venom arrives as he always does—not a ally, but a claimant. His biomass oozes from your pores, a tar-black second skin that glistens under the moon like oil spilled on midnight. He sheathes your claws in obsidian, stitches reinforced sinew where your human fragility once lingered, his voice a blade dragged along your cerebellum:

"Mmm. Better. Now we are beautiful."

You exhale, a rumble that shivers the ice from nearby branches. The growl is not yours, not wholly—it's the Indominus's basso profundo, a sound that splits the quiet into before and after. Squirrels flee. A red-tailed hawk abandons its roost. You are both earthquake and aftermath.

Here, in this stolen pocket of wilderness, the warring voices in your skull hush. The Indominus's hunger for open skies and Venom's craving for chaos momentarily align, their symbiosis thrumming through you like live wires. You are ruin incarnate... and yet.

A breeze skates across your armored flanks, carrying the distant wail of an ambulance. Someone's tragedy, someone's ordinary doom. For the first time since the med-bay, the iron bands around your ribs loosen. You breathe.

But the respite is a blade's edge. Venom's tendrils curl possessively around your throat. The Indominus stamps, impatient, cracking a boulder beneath your talons. They'll find you. They always do.

And when they do, you wonder—will your claws remember the weight of Peter's jawline? Or will they only know the poetry of slaughter?

SCENEBREAK'

The lab's sterile LEDs hummed like trapped wasps, casting Connors' hunchbacked silhouette against a wall of biometric readouts. His claws—still flecked with Y/N's dried blood—trembled as he tapped the holoscreen.

"Her telomeres are... unstable," he rasped, zooming in on a strand of DNA that writhed like a caged viper. "But this sample retains a quantum link to her symbiote. We can track its decay rate."

Peter's mask lay crumpled on a console, his face a mosaic of guilt and sleep deprivation. He leaned closer, breath fogging the display. "How long until the link degrades?"

"Twenty-six hours," Connors said. A droplet of sweat slid down his reptilian temple, sizzling as it hit the lab coat's frayed collar. "After that, she's just... noise in the system."

Miles' lenses narrowed. "So we move now. Suit up, triangulate—"

The door hissed open, flooding the room with the acrid tang of SHIELD's Level-7 disinfectant. Doctors Simmons and Radcliffe stood framed in the doorway, their smiles polished yet brittle—dental-perfect, soulless-perfect.

"Apologies, Dr. Connors!" Simmons chirped, her Scottish lilt sharpened to a scalpel's edge. "But the Web Warriors are hours behind on their Phase-2 cognitive drills."

Radcliffe's augmented eye whirred, its crimson lens flickering as it scanned Peter's slouched posture. "Stress-induced cortisol levels exceeding 1800 nmol/L," it droned. "Mandatory recalibration required."

Ben Reilly snorted, scarlet energy crackling around his fists. "Recalibrate this, toaster—"

"Stand down, Ben." Peter's voice cracked. He stood, chair screeching like a dying animal, and met Simmons' gaze. The unspoken truth hung heavier than the ventilation's recycled air: Fury's orders. Always Fury's orders.

As the team filed out, Miles lingered, fingertips brushing the holoscreen's flickering image of Y/N's DNA.

"Twenty-six hours," he whispered.

Simmons' hand clamped his shoulder, cold even through the suit. "Training first, Mr. Morales. Monsters can wait."

Behind them, unnoticed, Y/N's DNA sample began to bubble.

SCENEBREAK'

The cave stank of wet limestone and your own rancid musk—a tomb you'd carved with talons still clotted with last night's kill. Moonlight bled through the entrance, painting your spines in bone-white stripes.

Click.

A pebble skittered. You froze, nostrils flaring. Scent receptors fired: sunscreen, cotton candy, the sour-milk innocence of unwashed stuffed animals.

"Look, Mama! A dinosaur!"

The boy stood silhouetted in the threshold, Spider-Man backpack dangling from one hand. Six years old. Maybe seven. You could count the capillaries in his cheeks.

Venom's biomass surged first, tendrils snapping forward with the crack of a bullwhip. But the Indominus roared louder—mine, mine, MINE—and you lunged upright, Jurassic bulk shredding stalactites. The child's scream became a siren, primal and piercing, as your claws cleaved air inches from his scalp.

The mother moved like prey. All flailing limbs and fractured prayers. She yanked the boy backward, his sneaker squealing against stone, but your tail was already in motion. It struck her pelvis with the wet crunch of a melon dropped from great height.

"NO! NO, PLEASE—!"

You let her crawl. Three ragged meters, fingernails splintering on rock, before pinning her with a single claw through the sternum. The boy's wails crescendoed as you leaned down, Venom's jaws unhinging to savor her terror-smell—copper, ammonia, burnt sugar.

"P-please," she gargled, blood frothing at her lips. "He's... he's just a—"

Your tongue lashed out, flensing skin from cheekbone. "And you're just protein."

When it was done, you turned to the boy. He sat cross-legged in a slurry of his mother's viscera, eyes glazed with shock. Your reflection warped in his tears: a jagged collage of scales and teeth and eyes like smoldering reactor cores.

"P-pathetic," you spat, the word slithering out in Venom's guttural duplex. Yet your claws... your claws trembled. The Indominus thrashed against your ribs, demanding you crush his skull, salt the earth with his marrow. But something older—something still wearing Peter's laugh lines—whispered: Look what you've painted yourself into.

The boy reached out. Not to scream. Not to flee.

He pressed a sticky red hand to your talon.

"Y-you're hurt," he hiccuped.

Above you, a blood moon swelled. Below, your shadow birthed a thousand new monsters.