"What floor was he on?"

Venom's perfect memory spiraled back to day one with Steven and answered much calmer than Clara really was about meeting the "threat" they have been tasked with this mission for, "Fifth floor. I'll give you a lift."

He did not wait any moment whatsoever. They've done this a thousand times before, after all.

Venom detached a strong tentacle from her waist and wrapped it once around her. Then he allowed it to spring in speed and reach out to connect with the railing of the stairs, to the side, rather than the elevators right ahead. Clara helped him too, by jumping off the ground and giving the symbiote flesh the momentum to pull her off the ground and through the air, a way of traveling distances faster.

Behind the spot where she jumped, new cracks have been added to the dirty concrete floor in need of a broom sweep.

With the sheer power held by that seemingly sticky substance Venom was made out of, the jump carried out first to bring her to the stairs. Another bit of the Venom expanded from Clara's back and helped her stick to the wall, plant her heels in there and prepare for another jump.

This time Venom reached upwards, grabbed the railing on the fifth floor and brought her up there just in time for Steven Grant to bump into her. And then, though he despised the idea, Venom retracted back under her skin.

Steven yelped. His right hand clasped over his mouth to muffle a far too loud scream for feeling Clara's hands pressure his shoulders like a comfort blanket which he suddenly missed so dearly. Trembling from every limb, he had a hard time trying to tame his mind from flinching his body around, to look back at the dark hallway he was hoping to leave behind.

"The... with guns..." His voice was a tremor in its whole.

Clara's hands squeezed a bit tighter. "Steven, concentrate. We need to go."

"What?" Steven looked back at her. "Wait...," his voice pitched and grew quieter, "how are you here?"

"It doesn't matter." Her right hand grasped him by the forearm. She was going to turn them around, to get them going back down the stairs, and outside. But from the end of the hallway, heavy boots ran up.

"Assault rifles. Suit on-"

"No!" Clara shouted out loud, earning a very confused glance from Steven. She started putting her concentration into blocking out Venom's material from coming out and shielding her body with his own form.

But at the very same time, Steven's confusion made him stumble and the bullets from the rifles started firing at them.

"What do you mean no?!"

Steven Grant panicked and while Clara had left her guard down, his stumble dragged her along, falling against the railing which on the other side held only the five storey drop to the ground floor. Old buildings should not be trusted to support the weight of two people at once. The rust in the joints of the railing, that old part which barely connected the metal to concrete pillars in the walls, creaked once then turned to dust. The metal fence fell first and the power of the fall, just a second of clumsiness and lack of attention, drew the two after it as well.

Things just got out of hand, because Steven saw his life, pitiful, short and missing bits as it was, flash before his eyes. This was it for him, so he shut his eyes and waited to feel some wind on his face for yet another second and then let gravity, undeniably squish him to a dirty ground.

However, he opened his eyes after a shortness of breath and saw that dreaded end still five floors beneath him, while he felt a clear discomfort on his left arm. Steven hesitantly looked up, because now that the panic spiked sloped down, he heard the gunshots once more.

The upward gaze revealed a dust littered scenery.

Bullets punctured the walls, flew by Clara's left hand, by those four fingers with which she held onto the floor of the fifth storey. Her right hand had turned into a fist, holding on to Steven's sleeve even as he lightly swung. Nothing about this was normal... His wide eyes didn't know if it was getting shot at which startled him now, or the fact that his crush was holding both of their weight on four fingers.

"How are you doing this?" Steven breathed out and Clara seemed to flinch rather unaware that she should expect him to talk any time soon.

She looked down, forced a little smile, "Pilates?"

"Oh, for fuck's sake," Venom sighed and Clara could clearly picture her symbiote rolling his head around.

"Pilates-!" Steven's confusion turned into an exclamation as all of a sudden, his sleeve pulled his jacket halfway off his shoulder.

"I'll swing you," Clara hurried to say.

And Steven in his turn hurried to try and convince her out of the madness of doing acrobatics. "No, wait! Please...!" Clara was far faster and he already woke up flying, eyes wide, towards the fourth floor's railing, which obviously fell apart and met him as attenuation to the dive on the ground. He slid across the floor, his knees hurt while he hugged them to his chest and tried to shield his head, but he was alright.

"I'm alive," he sighed out, rather shocked.

"We can take them," Venom reminded Clara about the armed people, because she was left hanging. Her right hand finally reached up to hold her weight as well and since the shooting stopped and she thought Steven was not watching her anymore, her fingers dug into the fifth storey's floor. The concrete cracked, small craters formed while her hands were covered in Venom, to heal the bruises formed and protect from further damage.

"Come on down, I can hold you." Steven, once on his feet, went to the edge of the stairs on the fourth floor and reached out, not really done with his math on how to help Clara get down there as well, but willing to follow her directions if she had any.

She was just about to lift herself to the fifth floor, take those armed bitches the good old way and perhaps eat some heads as well, while she was at it, because this strength was a true expense while hungry. But then she heard Steven and she hesitated.

"Target's on the fourth floor," someone from the threat group said and it settled Clara's decision.

"Step aside," she called at Steven. He stepped back almost immediately and watched the woman's bravery to let go of the fifth floor and trust herself in this free fall that she'll grasp the fourth ground too. She heroically did and lifted herself up to kneel properly on solid ground long before Steven blinked himself back to reality to give her a hand.

"You got to give me the address where you are learning pilates," he gulped down the dryness of his throat, trying to keep his cool, though he was sweating and his willing hands were shaking.

"I'm self-taught," Clara dismissed his comment, feeling like she dodged a bullet. Soon enough she'd have to dodge real bullets. An acute hearing, courtesy of Venom, let her know, just as she sat up and tried to get Steven to the stairs, that the elevator ding sound downstairs. She stopped them and stepped away from the stairs. The second elevator sounded on their floor.

"Stay behind me and hold on to my arm," Clara directed Steven and he followed, though more out of a submissive instinct, than actual judgment of understanding what she was preparing them for.

The elevator doors opened on the fourth floor and three armed enemies stepped out.

Steven saw them and tried to walk the other way, towards the stairs, but Clara's aim was the window at the end of the hallway, towards which the only path was through these puny enemies. She secured his hand into her right and just when the three turned their rifles towards them, she was within arm reach of doing something about it.

The closest man to her was the first target. "Let me help," Venom added.

Clara's fist closed on the collar of his protection vest and her elbow raised to the side, kicking the barrel of the rifle out of the way. "No," she answered Venom, because her right hand let go of Steven's just to slip to the back of his head. She pushed him down in time to duck a few bullets from the remaining two.

The one she held by the collar, Clara did not allow him the time to react, because she released her fist and pushed the bridge of her palm into his sternum, with enough force to hear a crack and get the man propelled right back into the elevator, before the doors closed and as they were passing by it.

"Bollocks! Bollocks..." Steven kept on cursing. His heart was hammering so hard in his chest he was hearing rhythmic fast drums into his ears. From his perspective, of a bowed head, trying to look down and not get shot, Clara was doing impossible things from which he only heard bone cracking sounds.

She was grateful he wasn't looking, because it would have been pretty hard to explain how exactly she grabbed the barrel of the second guy's rifle and bent it upwards. It became a handle, whose end she pushed into his shoulder until it dislocated and he was pushed into the wall. The wall cracked behind his back, blood pooled to the ground behind him and dust rained from above, from under the old lightbulb which shook so hard it flickered.

In the shade of the flicker from above, a second source of light came from the firing of two rounds. The first round scraped her left forearm and the second audibly fired right through her right shoulder. Some blood drops dripped into Steven's curled hair but it was not that absent feeling of something wet which made him look up, but the sound itself.

Only he did not expect to look at the bullet wound, a clear hole, bigger on Clara's back, to seal itself up with the help of black fiber moving in real time, right before his eyes. But Steven got pushed back immediately, just a step behind Clara. She rolled her shoulder, shook her left arm, letting the already knocked out man drop, and then turning around, she slapped the end of the rifle away from her face with a grunt.

The strength of that hit took the last enemy off guard because the rifle escaped his grip and fell on the ground, firing the last bullet on the barrel. Steven yelped but he got lucky and the round just shot the lightbulb dead. Shards fell over the scene and into a ominous darkness, Clara caught the confidence to grin a wicked pleasure to fight.

She stepped closer, amused by the man's attempt to defend himself by throwing a strategic punch. Her hand immediately connected to this man's neck. The index finger's knuckle lifted the chin until the jaw's limit was cracked at the back and his feet lifted off the ground.

However, her gaze slipped and the perfect vision Venom's presence gave her was distracted entirely by the sight of some very familiar letters branded into the man's collarbone skin: O.M.N.I.U.M.

Clara put the man back on the floor just to push him against the wall. In her mind, and Venom's too, different pieces of memory puzzled together to remember the night in which she became his host.

"What do you know about O.M.N.I.U.M.?" Even through gritted teeth, her tough question, more of verbal threat in the shape of a growl, shouldn't have been spoken, because she dislocated his jaw just a second ago. Even if he wanted to answer, he couldn't. Her hand let go of his neck, leaving behind a red bruise, only to land on his forehead and help his head smash on its back on the wall.

Ever since the first guy was taken down, she almost forgot Steven was with her. When she turned towards him, she realized that even without Venom out, he looked at her absolutely terrified.

So she didn't let her eyes linger on watching him too long, she couldn't see him becoming one with the wall, hugging himself and having his knees crumble, shake and lower to the ground slowly. Instead, she looked back at the stairs and realized there was more sound coming from the ground floor, sounding much closer now than before. They realized they stopped at the fourth floor.

"I'm sorry, Steven, but we gotta move," Clara took his hand again.

He resisted this time, trying to put some resistance in moving across the knocked out men and towards the dead end of the hallway. "Where are we going? The stairs are the other way."

"I need you to hug me."

"What?"

"Just wrap your arms around me and please close your eyes. Don't look no matter what you hear."

"You killed them!" Steven looked back at the three men on the ground, though he could only see two.

"Did not," Clara shook her head, though she was very aware that all of those she fought there were on the verge of death unless taken to the hospital immediately, which wasn't going to happen. She hated that she had to do this, but she hugged Steven closer to her.

"We need to jump through the window, they're on the stairs," she explained.

"Who are you?" he insisted instead with a shaking voice.

"Please, just hold on tight. Venom?"

"Venom?" Steven questioned her last word, just as he decided to do as he was told and wrap his arms around her neck, duck his head.

Clara was already running towards the window, about to turn around at the last second, jump through with her back with enough force for the large enough window to break and let them out. Out there, Venom should have come in, but just when she jumped through, his voice echoed a dramatic and sarcastic sound into her mind.

"Now you need me?"

In anyone's mind that would have sounded like their last escape bailed on them, but Clara didn't flinch. She only held on tighter to Steven, because he too cursed and held tighter to her. It was that slowed second of falling which overtook her then, the moment of pure realization that she was a monster, with or without Venom.

The latter heard that thought and felt bad he even considered letting his host get smashed on the ground along with that pesky little protégé with weird separate personalities.

Steven caught a glimpse of Clara's whole right arm turning black, in serpent like veins, corrupting her. The tentacle sprung from there and stuck to the wall, swinging them down to a safe landing in the parking lots behind the apartment building, right between two cars.

Feeling sick to his stomach from the violence, the weirdness and the literal upside down twist his perfect three days took, Steven stepped away from Clara and she let him be, let him put that distance between them, because she also had to catch her breath.

"You saw that brand on his skin?" she whispered a question to Venom, still looking around the parking lot, to make sure it would be safe for them to hide there for a moment or just move out altogether.

"The same name as the one on the ship which brought me to Earth," Venom confirmed. "The others will be coming down, let's get to the motorcycle before they come over, unless you wanna make your crush shit his pants. What? Don't give me that look. You knew I knew, it's not any news."

Clara just sighed a simple smile to all of that, turning around to let Steven know they were not done for the night yet. However, she was met by a strong punch, right across her face.

Some tears were instinctively brought to her eyes while she stumbled back and held the left side of her face. Looking up, she saw the same figure, Steven's clothes, face, features... But his gaze was more composed now, his glare was certain. And that punch...

"Marc," Clara straightened up with a bitter smile, dropping her hand down. "We got to stop meeting like this."

"I told you to look after Steven, not flirt with him," Marc reminded her. He was angry.

This time, Venom's head formed out of Clara's back and spoke out loud for both to hear, "Come on, Clara, let's have a rematch with him. I am ready this time." That teeth-filled smile was disgusting to Marc Spector, so he was almost tempted to look away. Clara caught sight of that disgust and glared at the man too, at last.

"Just give me my money back and you'll never see me again, sweetheart," she added a derogatory sarcasm to her demand.

Marc took a threatening step forward and though Clara did not back away, both of them ducked down when gunshots continued to be fired towards them.

author's note:    I am so proud of this chapter and that I've managed to write it while at uni, for seminars 👀✌ Plus, the first fight scene, be it short, I think it qualifies for another iconic 💫hallway💫 fight scene hah-

I wanna also THANK YOU ALL for like giving this book 1k views already? I was on the verge of tears when that milestone presented itself wow... 💗💕💖

Now, curtesy of Raichia and her brilliance, a moodboard for Clara and Marc, since they've just been introduced: