i took the pill, i've been consumed
i drank the water, i had to choose
--

You would never have guessed that the very next night after you had spoken to Stephanie, that she'd be literally sneaking you into the building. But, with everything she had explained to you, and with you being pretty much blacklisted from the facility, it was the only way to get you in.
So be it, then.
You were curled in a ball on the floor in the back seat of her car, buried under a pile of blankets to hide you from sight. "Are you sure this is gonna work?" you asked her, sniffling from the fleece of the outermost blanket tickling your nose.
Stephanie shushed you with a finger to her lips, the car approaching the security checkpoint. "Just... stay down and shut up, please," she quickly responded, turning back around.
That silenced you enough, and you ducked back underneath the blankets.
You felt the car come to a stop. Through the fabric of the top blanket, you could see a brightly-lit road, and the security booth with the gate. Stephanie flashed them her badge, and they nodded and passed her through. Once you knew you were safely out of sight, you crawled out from the blanket pile and sat quietly in the back seat until you were where you were supposed to be.
The younger woman drove down into a guarded garage, parking the vehicle along the curb and opening the door to finally let you out.
"Overpopulation and climate change," she mused as you shut the car door. "These are two big things that Crawford thinks he control, but can't. "We're only a generation away from being an uninhabitable Earth. And he's using his personal rockets to scout 'real estate', if you get me."
You watched her press the badge to the entry door's scanner, following her inside. "That's a super interesting story and all," you quipped, "But could you maybe... get to the part where he's killing people?"
Stephanie nodded instantly, leading you through a couple of hallways to an elevator. "Crawford sent a ship on a recon mission of sorts," she told you. "On the way back, it found a stray comet. Computers on board that ship indicated signs of life- millions of organisms."
The elevator descended, and you interrupted her sentence. "Wait," you started, almost in disbelief. "By 'millions of organisms', what you do..."
She nodded. "We brought back some specimens."
"So what, we're talking about... aliens?" you raised an eyebrow, hardly daring to believe what she had just told you. "Like..." you made your voice sound cartoonish, waving your fingers around for added effect, "ET phone home, 'take us to your leader', type aliens?"
Stephanie stared at you, expressionless. "Yes," she stated bluntly, causing your eyebrows to raise in shock. "But... we don't necessarily call them that."
She exited the elevator, you standing in silence watching her until you followed her, waiting for a response.
She eventually spoke, "We call them Symbiotes."
"Symbiotes...?" you echoed, testing the name of the creatures on your tongue.
"Yes," she affirmed, "And they cannot survive in our type of environment without help. Crawford believes that the union between human and Symbiote is the key for both of them to survive- the Symbiote here, and human somewhere else."
You shook your head, trying to process everything. "So this guy is actually trying to put humans and aliens together," you tried to sum it up, "Just so that we can live in space?"
Stephanie nodded again. You seemed to be catching on faster than you thought. "The humans that are unified with the Symbiotes; we call them hosts."
You nodded back. "That's nuts," you said plainly. "That's completely insane."
"Exactly!" she agreed in a whisper-shout. "There's no proper protocol for this, he's just feeding them in one by one, and if the match isn't exact-"

You both heard the faint sound of a security guard's walkie-talkie go off. From the volume it was at, you could only assume it was only a few halls down, and getting closer.
Sensing the approaching danger, the scientist flashed her badge against the screen against the wall, the doors opening quietly. "Hurry, please, just- go inside," she whispered quickly, "Don't touch anything, I'll take care of it, just go."
She shoved you lightly through the doors, watching as they closed in front of her, then started walking away as if she had just come out and nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
The security guard who came down the hall met her halfway, only mildly surprised to see her. "Dr. Buss, I thought you had already gone home," he spoke to her.
Stephanie chuckled lightly with a small grin. "Yes, well... you know what they say," she shrugged, saying a silent prayer for your sake. "Science never sleeps."

The room was pitch black, save for the almost ethereal blue lights coming from the numerous cells on the inside circle. It was also too silent for your liking- even the humming of the machines seemed to be dimmed by the glass walls.
Walking closer to get a better look at what was nestled inside, you cautiously pulled your phone from your jacket pocket, activating the camera to snag some photos of the hard evidence that lay before your eyes. Most of the cells were empty, until you came across one that held quite a sight to behold.
A body was sprawled across the floor, most likely a male, dressed in a stark white shirt and baggy pair of pants. He wasn't responding to anything, and you saw no movement in the chest or stomach. He was definitely dead.
But what caught your attention even more than that was the rather grotesque looking object splayed along the table legs not even a foot away- an unidentifiable object that looked like a cross between a pile of slime and a dead octopus, colored a deep blue on the outside but fading to a sickly, pale blue in the center. There was a small amount of residue from it that was dried on the glass door in front of you. It too, was still.
You snapped a couple more pictures, then moved on to the next cell.
This one was smaller, and only held a human that appeared to be sleeping. Their only form of comfort was a pillow to rest their head. Steam radiated off the door in plentiful amounts. The small screen to the side displayed the following:
CONDITION: STABLE:
DAYS IN HOST: 4
Once more, you took a few photos and moved two cells over, to one that was the same size and held one lone human. Unlike the last one, where it was covered with steam, this one's door and walls were caked in frost and ice. The screen read:
CONDITION: STABLE
DAYS IN HOST: 7
The body looked to be female, but you weren't completely sure, as they were curled up in a ball, hugging their knees to their chest and their head buried inbetween. Still, you did the same as before, taking some pictures before turning and walking away to another cell, only to hear violent pounding on the cell's door. Startled, you whipped around and were met with a familiar face.
"...Mandy?!" you exclaimed, seeing her eyes filled with terror.

"[name]!" she shouted, her voice muffled through the glass. "Thank god, you've gotta get me out of here, please! I-I'm scared!" She looked ready to cry at any moment. "Please, help me!"
You frantically looked around for anything to open the door, settling first for trying to enter the code to do so, only for the screen to flash a bright red with an 'ERROR' message. The alarm that sounded throughout the building caused Mandy to scream at the top of her lungs, eyes screwed shut and hands covering her ears in an attempt to ward off the noise, but to no avail.
Quickly, you spotted a fire extinguisher laying against the wall and grabbed it, proceeding to slam it over and over again to the glass wall, eventually shattering it to pieces.

What you didn't expect after that was for Mandy to lunge out of the door, still screaming as she tackled you to the floor in an attempt to pin you down and claw at your face.
"Agh, Mandy- Mandy, it's me!" You shouted at her, fighting to keep her away. "No, no- hey, get off!"
However, she managed to wrap her hands around your throat with more strength than you thought she had, and your eyes widened at the sight of something emerging from her shoulders- it was exactly like the thing you saw in the first occupied cell; the same sort of creature, but this one was a shiny black, pulsating with life as it moved from her arms, down to her hands, and then disappearing effortlessly into your skin. Light gurgling noises reached your ears, and then, just as soon as it began, it stopped.
Mandy then tumbled off of you and onto the ground next to you, still as a rock. Dead.
"Oh god no, Mandy?!" you tried not to shriek, grabbing her shoulders in an attempt to wake her up, hoping that she wasn't gone, but you already knew the truth.
At that point, only one thing came to your mind.
You sprang to your feet and out the door, running for your life.

You sprinted down the halls, desperately trying to avoid the two security guards not hot on your tail. One came at you from down the hall, and you felt your body immediately act on its own- you quickly jumped up, planting your feet against the wall to your right and taking him to the floor with a right hook. One more approached in the same manner, and this time, you slid to the ground, tripping him with your ankles.
The look of shock that spread across your face was well-warranted.
From behind, you heard another three guards burst through the door, and you sped off once again, racing for a way out. The only one you found after some time was an emergency exit door, but it was all you had and you were willing to take it.
You literally kicked the door off its hinges, leaping over the railing to the ground and continuing your escape, the amount of guards following you now increasing to seven. Your legs carried you all the way to the outskirts of the back parking lot, the forest next to it blocked off by a fence about fifteen meters high.
And if kicking down a door didn't stop you, then this sure as hell wasn't going to, either.
Bracing for the impact, you felt your body jump off the ground and curl up slightly, crashing through the steel links of the fence like a cannonball and rolling down the small, grassy hill. You were out of the building, but not out of the vicinity.

And now the guards were shooting at you.
Great.
You continued to ask yourself how this was all happening as you dodged bullet after bullet, your body swerving left and right through the trees. They shot at your feet, but you swiftly changed direction and kept running. So shocked, were you, with trying to avoid the gunfire, that you failed to notice the fallen tree blocking your path. However, just like the door and the fence before it, your body smashed through it and you tumbled to the dirt, surprisingly still in one piece and without a single scratch.
You had no time to rest. You felt your body literally pick itself off the ground, then force you to keep running once you were back on your feet.
What the hell was going on?
When you reached a small clearing, you swallowed the lump in your throat. You heard them coming from all sides now, some even in small cars, all ready to shoot you down.
You glanced around frantically, then stopped.

You only had one option now.

"Where the hell did she go?"
"I can't see her!"
"Spread out, find her."
The guards, confused as they were, all took off around the area they all met up at, searching the grounds within a two-hundred foot radius. Despite the amount of trees still present, the clearing that surrounded them couldn't hide what they were after forever.

But that wasn't exactly true.

There, up at the very top of the tallest tree, just feet away from where they had stopped, was you. Hugging onto the trunk of the Redwood for dear life, glancing at the array of guards thirty meters below you.

You didn't even bother to wonder how the hell you managed to get all the way up there so fast. You just hoped they would go away and let you eventually escape.

You just hoped you didn't fall in the meantime.

The sun had just finished rising into the sky by the time you managed to lose the guards and find your way home. Stumbling frantically through the door of your apartment, phone to your ear, you groaned in exasperation at the voicemail greeting that spoke to you.
"This is Stephanie Buss, leave me a message."
"Hey, Dr. Buss, it-it's [name]," you managed to speak, throwing your keys on the table and yanking the refrigerator open. "I just got back, I-I'm okay- well, kind of. I'm in one piece, but I'm not feeling the best..." you grabbed the leftover box of General Tso Chicken and two apples, slamming the door shut. "But I, uh, I haven't heard from you since I saw you, so I wanna know if you're okay. I'm gonna go- go see this guy, I've got a few photos I can give to him-"
You suddenly felt queasy, quickly moving to grab a cup and fill it with water. "But yeah, just-just call me back when you can, okay?"
You hung up the phone, throwing it onto the couch and downing the water without stopping for air. Only seconds later, you grabbed the box of chicken from the counter and began to take several mouthfuls, practically inhaling it as you ate. Chew, swallow, repeat. Chew, swallow, repeat. You couldn't see your eyes flash a strange combination of the same black colors as the thing that you saw earlier.
The entire box was gone in less than a minute, and you didn't even have the strength to take one of the apples. You immediately felt sick to your stomach, racing for the bathroom and kneeling next to the toilet, the combination of bile and the chicken you had just ate spiraling up from your throat and vomited out into the water of the bowl.
You fell to the floor, coughing incessantly. "...what the fuck is wrong with me?" you managed to groan out, holding your head.
After a few minutes of letting your body slump in defeat, you pulled yourself back up to the bathroom counter, quickly brushing your teeth with extra toothpaste and an extra cup of mouthwash to get the taste of puke out of your mouth. A little splash of water onto your face later, and you slowly began to feel better. You brushed your hair out of your face and looked at your reflection in the mirror, breathing heavily, but steady once more.
But then...

"[name]."

You screamed at the sound of the low, gravelly voice that came out of nowhere- a voice that knew your name- falling back into the cupboards and falling to the floor, out cold.