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Khonshu was right beside her, unseen, looking at all the blood leaving her body and knowing he could do nothing about it. Not yet. Not until Priscila was also in the room. He swore to follow their plan, didn't he?

Yet he couldn't help but ponder, as he waited a while for the action to unfold, on how he had once seen this happen amongst the stars. His vision was still crystal clear, only it now made ever the more sense: Clara Carita had no time to recover from the blood loss by the time the red symbiote got to her and followed species instincts to defeat its maker. If Khonshu did nothing, she'd be eaten alive and there was no coming back from that. In his initial vision, he only knew his Moon Knight would arrive and he'd be able to take down the whole O.M.N.I.U.M. operation, saving the world.

Now... Khonshu knew that would be happening because of Marc's rage upon acknowledging Clara was gone, forever. It wasn't efficiency which he foretold, it was the madness of loss and of love. That future was stained in red and shame from a promise he would betray.

The God had a choice and he had long since made up his mind.

"Do you trust this God?" Paul waited, much like everyone else, on a chair. However, unlike the others, he looked composed, almost calm. Centuries on end of theatrics and cover ups have made the demon learn to ease into a carcass without any display of emotion, even if the fire in his chest flickered, even if the guilt in his veins was made of acids eating him from inside out.

Years of espionage had made Grizzly patient, stoic, a ghost unfelt in the deserted environment of the bunker, accompanied every once in a while only by the beeping sound of Michael's vitals, which made him flinch.

Less skilled at hiding his worry was Marc. He trembled from his every limb unlike ever before.

Until a few minutes ago, he was pacing around, anxiously waiting.

He felt as if Clara slammed that door between them all over again, only this time there was no confession, no last kiss. This goodbye felt permanently shattering, because it didn't happen. Marc could sense his body pinned with fear, unable to react, once more.

The irony was bitter, reminding him that he could snap necks with his bare hands, even without Khonshu, but that door which separated them once was massively heavy; he couldn't reach it and he had a horrifying feeling he wasn't yet strong enough to open it either.

His hands were the restless ones, fingers fidgeting and brushing against each other, knuckles cracking every five minutes, getting ready. He has never been this sort of nervous. Not before putting on his uniform and taking a gun in his arms, not before matches which could have been the end of him and certainly not before any mission. Marc has gotten so used to being on his own that he was swept off his feet by this terror of knowing he had something other than himself to lose.

He was nervous now, even as the cape flicked behind him and he could breath cleanly out a head uncovered from under that part of the costume. He was suffocating under the weight of pressure alone: he wasn't a hero, yet he aimed to save lives which mattered.

The longer he paced, the harder it was to convince himself that he got this in the bag. She was too important to risk being confident.

Sitting down did not work miracles on him either.

From his crouched posture, the shadow upon his face grew its accent on his features. Eyebrows furrowed down. Mouth petrified into a snarl. A rapid eye movement made him look like he started counting grains of dust, when Paul's voice stabbed the silence in the bunker mercilessly blunt.

It wasn't a knife through butter, that question of his, more like the butter knife through coarse wood or chalk. It screeched and irked the worst of reactions out.

Marc's body stopped any gesticulation. He became a statue under the thought the inquiry fabricated and brought into the light for him.

Did he trust Khonshu?

They were pressured enough by time lately that apart from the shouting exchange when they died, he hadn't properly considered anything which had happened to Clara and him since they met and what percentage of that could really be blamed on the God.

Did he really trust with giving them the green light the same God who conspired to get Clara killed? The same manipulator?

He felt stupid and that deprication brought Marc at the stage of beating himself up for it. He should have insisted more. He shouldn't have let Clara go through with this. What kind of man...? What kind of person would let their loved one put themselves in danger over and over again?

Paranoia made Marc's breath hitch. He got scared, because he knew exactly what the answer should be and it wasn't anything comforting.

His head bowed and this time, his hands placed over his ears, gripping the short cut hair, letting the relaxed curls tense between his fingers. Thumbs dug into his temples with Marc's attempt to clear out this new crippling anxiety.

"I suppose that answers it," Paul flattened his smile watching this clear uncertainty exude from the man.

"You can do it," Steven's voice spoke to him when reality almost slipped from Marc entirely. The latter's eyes shot open, staring down.

"Not even Clara believes we can do it," Marc mouthed what Steven and Jake could hear and Grizzly could have read off his lips too, if he didn't look away consciously to give the man some privacy with himself

"We had a few rough times," Jake whispered too. "We just have to regain her trust, prove her wrong."

"You're going to save her. I mean, hasn't the mission in New York gone perfectly?" Steven completed and Marc closed his eyes again.

"You're in control now, Marc, and you got this. So please save our girl and her alien, alright?"

"Get up!" Khonshu ordered, voice louder than Marc's mind.

He lifted his gaze and he knew his suffering had ended.

For one last time before his face got covered in the morphing ceremonial suit, Marc allowed himself to take notice of his heartbeat. He got this. He needed to believe that.

While the new symbiote was eating the soldier, Venom broke him and Clara out of the table restraints. Unfortunately, that was a dangerous gamble. As soon as he was even an inch out of her body, the red one turned around from advancing towards Hayes and instead smashed a hand into their glass cell. The glass shook, but it did not crack just yet.

Venom maneuvered Clara's body to fall off the bed, pulling it to the side as a shield for them, just in time for it to capture one red spike shot by the red symbiote.

"Awe," Clara looked down at herself through the little haze she found it hard to recover from, "this was a good shirt..."

Because her back was exactly against the turned bed, the second spike fired by the red symbiote impaled her stomach.

"Pull that out!" Venom was panicking for both of them. "Let me heal you before it comes-" A loud bang gave away to him what was happening behind their weak cover: the red symbiote broke through the glass. Shards twirled on the ground and reflected light formidably distracting for Clara's slightly lost mind.

"How's that symbiote even here?" she mumbled, ripping herself forward and off the spike with a gasp of pain. She was on her knees, hands falling over the shards. Her sight doubled while Venom was trying to decide what exactly he should be healing first in his host. Her dizziness was affecting him too, tripling the paralyzing effect of his own fear.

"That's a red one!" Venom explained the best he could while his voice got uncontrollably loud.

"No need to shout," Clara complained, but her faint mutter was once overtaken in sound by her very attempt to turn around, getting herself to finally lean the back of her head against the still standing glass wall piece, then twice by the sound of the red one tearing everything in its path apart. Its head showed over the turned over bed and Clara gulped.

"Buddy, this seems like a fight you should be handling. Suit on?"

This red symbiote looked grotesque, challenging and full of hatred. Clara was pretty sure she looked small, weak even, under the shadow this one casted. For a second, she even thought her gaze could appreciate that this red one was slightly bigger than her Venom too, something which was not in the slightest comforting.

"Running would give us better odds," Venom commented.

"You're scared," Clara couldn't believe she noticed that.

"It's made from our blood and it wants to eat us. OF COURSE I AM!"

She glanced once past the symbiote and saw Priscila was no longer in her bed. The panic overtook her fear and pain and Clara dragged herself across shards backwards, attempting to follow Venom's directions, or at least make sure that new symbiote focuses on her, not on her sister, who might make a run for it.

The last piece of the glass wall fell over and on its shattering sound, the red one grabbed the metal bed and tossed it to the side. There, the bed stopped, grabbed by a pair of white gloves. They held it until the metal of it bent and then smashed it back into the monster which just started screaming in Clara's face.

Marc let go of the bed, letting it follow the red one in a fall. He was busy rushing to Clara's side.

"Blood vials, on the ground," Khonshu directed from a corner of the room. "It's her blood. Will help her heal if you make her drink it back into the system."

Marc was halfway through executing the order by the time Khonshu finished giving him an explanation for it. He only had one good glance at Clara before focusing on getting all the blood vials still intact on the ground and he saw her pale, hurt... Everything which would make his heart squirm and his mind turn to a storm willing to get over any grudge or difference he held against Khonshu if it meant they'd help her.

"My sister," Clara's hand immediately clasped over his right wrist. She could still hear the red symbiote and that meant, if Priscila was still there, he could be hurting the one she would have much rather been saved before herself.

"Paul just took her out of here, she's safe with Grizzly." Marc let her hold onto his right arm and made her drink the blood with his left, all vials at once to save them time. Time was what they lacked the most, yet the second Clara blinked some focus into her gaze a realization took her entire attention.

Revitalization helped her lift her free hand up and touch that white hood of his. "You came," she breathed out in disbelief once she was done drinking back her and Venom's blood.

"Never been more grateful to see his stupid costume," Venom breathed out relieved to finally be in full strength and realigned with Clara.

Marc watched how her wounds sealed up and once he looked back up at her, he discovered with a skip of happiness in his heart that she was watching him. Having her within close proximity and alright again was enough reassurance to make his whole body feel weak. He spared only the smallest moment to get his left hand, now empty, up to her mouth and clean a corner of blood.

But Clara had gratitude to express and in that moment, her best outlet was quickly wrapping her arms around him and hugging as tightly as she could.

"Thank you," she breathed out, but in her body, Marc recognized the aroma of true relief. In an inhale, Clara's senses got swarmed with this undeniable security; his scent was a drug worth risking in the middle of a fight for.

He had been right to assume that she didn't trust anyone to show up for her.

This embrace he answered clumsily and excitedly only accentuated his heartbeat to emotional rhythms. It was an aphrodisiac to know he could finally give to her something at least a nuance closer to comparison to the greatest offerings he had too received through the conduct of her lips. The scales were not even and Marc was aware he will perhaps never be able to repay her loyalty, her patience, her kindness. But he could dedicate himself to trying. One win is all he needed.

"Dodge, you fools!"

Marc caught Clara into his arms better at once and rolled them to the side, where his cloak shielded them both from shards and the claws of the red symbiote trying to reach an attack at them. A red spike bounced off of it too.

"Right," Clara looked up, eyes focused on Marc. "Think I should tell you that red thing sort of wants to eat me."

"Before me?" Marc huffed, earning a grin from Clara. That was a truly reviving sight, especially while she was under him. "That sounds illegal." To be together again, to not be alone, it made this easier than it would have otherwise been.

"Now's not the time!" Both Khonshu and Venom curiously shouted at the same time at their humans. Both of them rolled their eyes.

"Go after Hayes," Marc turned around first, taking one blade and slashing the face of the red symbiote. He got up, fully ready to fight and Clara moved to her feet behind him. "He ran out the second exit when I got here, but I managed to scrape his leg. Make sure he dies."

The red symbiote purposefully tried to move Marc out of his way to get to Clara, now that she took a step back from the scene. Its pushes were twice as strong when she let Venom suit up her body.

"I'm betting on you, boyfriend," Venom pointed at Marc then crawled onto the ceiling, swung onto the wall and got out through the torn open back exit.

Venom's claws dug into the concrete. The red one's claws tried to impale Marc.

Resiliently he had slashed at that fastly regenerating flesh from the first second. Tentacles and fibers stuck to him in an alarmingly fast tempo and if he took even a single breath as a pause, he was aware he'd be consumed by those tendons pulling on his sleeves, on his hood, trying to get past the rock solid bandages and scratch his skin.

Once the symbiote stabbed Marc's hand, pinned it to the ground and kicked the blade out of his grip, he retorted to his bare hands without hesitation. Hesitation would get him killed even more so than his need for violence.

Using the pinning action for an anchor, Marc kicked the jaw of the monster, turned his back at him and ripped his hand free. He lost two fingers and a good bit of that palm, but the suit actively worked for him and he was a professional at ignoring bloodstains and pain.

With a masochistic determination, Marc's precision came to play while he appreciated that letting the symbiote hit him a couple of times would give him better openings still. How much would be too much? That wasn't something he could tell, but... he had to win and he had to make it out.

Marc turned around, got his fists up and went for two good punches, whose mystically backed up strength staggered the alienated experiment. Then the red symbiote drove a sword-like claw through his chest, lifting him off the ground.

Marc took out another moon-shaped blade and restlessly forced it into the open mouth coming for his head. He stuck the pointy ends into the base of the long tongue. Half his left arm was being swallowed. Teeth bit down on it and in order to not lose it all, he used his right hand to press the symbiote's mouth open.

Without a single sound, Marc clenched his left fist above the blade. He took a deep breath, and then punched that blade deeper, cutting off the monster's tongue. Marc was thrown near the freezers, while the thing screamed in pain.

The door of the freezer next to him opened and on it, amongst thousands of labeled bottles, he saw a glimpse of his reflection.

"We can make fire," Steven smiled at him. Seeing Steven talk to him while their body was physically in pain was new, so Marc's first reaction was to glare from behind the mask. "Look at the bottles we have." Marc followed his instructions, even if on his knees, crawling for now, "Grab the potassium permanganate and-"

"The glycerin," Marc completed. He ripped a bit of his costume to pour the chemicals into like a pouch to tighten his hand on.

The red symbiote already shot spikes towards Marc. Its screams were strong enough to make his ears hurt, to make his brain feel like it had needles shoved into it from all sides. Glasses shattered, the ground tremored.

Marc had to dodge under those conditions, while playing with chemicals, something highly unsafe but worth a shot.

His right knee got properly scratched by a spike. Then his elbow. His blood stained that whole arm quickly, faster than the suit could react through its bound magic.

Alas, Marc got back on his feet and without a single sound of pain, without even the smallest grunt, he ran towards this horrifying enemy once more. The red symbiote was getting tired of the tiny human. It grew a second pair of arms and its next move was to claw into Marc's chest, beginning to rip the costume apart. Marc descended the flat of his left forearm into those extra hands it grew, pushed them off of him, even if it made him be dropped to the ground. He bravely took a mouthful of the floor's rough welcome.

The symbiote picked him up by the cape and lifted him over his growing wide open mouth. A tentacle twisted to wrap around Marc's neck but he didn't bother fighting because he dropped the wrapped chemicals, already warmer in his hand, into the symbiote's mouth. Halfway down its throat, Marc watched them catch fire.

The red one screamed, convulsed, threw him away in an erratic way and stumbled back, hitting its head against the wall.

Venom landed back on the ground pretty soon after following the narrow hallway and the blood trail. His scent was flaring them on the right path. Once next to the stairs, he attached the tentacles to the highest floor and slowly ascended through the floors, sniffing each one of them in mortuary silence. His presence made no sound, the building was quiet.

First floor: Venom caught the tasty aroma of their target in the air. Looking down at the floor, he saw a few drops of fresh blood, hiding in the dark, pointing him to stop and to detach the tentacles. He slowly landed before doors he extended his hand towards, to push open in a civilized manner.

That until he sniffed again and his grin turned full of whiteness, full of teeth.

"A welcoming party?" Clara huffed a little laugh for both of them. "Hungry, buddy?"

"Always."

Venom ripped the doors open, holding one in each hand, and when those same sonic nets which tried to kill his blood offspring were launched at him, he hit them with the said doors, sending the nets into the walls and doors to the left and towards the windows on the right.

Venom ran grinning through this first attack.

Twelve soldiers did not see that one coming.

"Too bad O.M.N.I.U.M. dropped the super soldier serum," Clara and Venom both complained at the same time, her on the inside and Venom on the outside with a bone shattering voice about to live up to its terror.

The first guy was an easy meal. Venom bit his head off and tossed the body into a lab, where it shattered some glass.

The nets he left behind were making an irritating noise, but in anger and willpower backed by his host, that psychosomatic weakness was but a tickle the symbiote needn't distance himself from.

He took in the damage of a few small guns. Bullets entered Venom's skin and he laughed, deciding not to move away, but rather remain still and take in the joy of watching the body language responses to the sort of laugh which left these poor brainwashed followers with a pending urge to shit themselves, surely.

From the crouched position, Venom straightened up slowly, waiting for each gun to lock back. Then, his shoulders rolled back. Each bullet fired started falling out of the flexed muscles, reshaping and remodeling by the sounds of a metallic rain.

"Show off," Clara commented.

Venom looked down on the humans, tongue hanging out with an ever-present hunger, "My turn." 

On all fours and beast-like, he devoured the first three closest, while simply tearing the others apart. Without their fancy sonic weapons, he found it easy to break their armor, eat through or crush their skulls, bash their brains, break their spines.

He didn't take his time though. Each hit was a rushed violence which he knew had to be made so not only they could go back to tracking Hayes, the head of this shitshow, but also to stay true to their word, to that threat Clara chilled their bones with. They'd be the last face they see, in a gore display.

For the pain, for the torture, for the unknown prison and for the cruelty. For putting in danger the only people they love: the sister, the combo-person and each other.

Dr. Hayes couldn't walk any further than into the first lab of the next floor. Climbing those stairs made that stupid blade he chose not to take out of his leg go deeper. He had to sit down and take care of the wound, but even if he did, the second he collapsed on the ground, he heard the commotion downstairs and knew he didn't have long.

"I failed," he looked down at his ring. His ears were ringing, his scar caught beads of sweat and his hair, once slid back slickly, now looked like a porcupine, scared to death.

The legacy of O.M.N.I.U.M. was inscribed into that heavy thing, the ring worn by Oleg Montes.

Now, more than ever, the ring was a tight burden on his skeletal finger. He raised his hand instead of tending to his wound and kissed the ring. Slow poison stained his lips while they whispered to the piece of jewelry, "It got so incredibly close, but I didn't find the right way. Now, the mission will endure without me..."

"I can hear you," Venom's rough voice sang. His shadow played in the silver beginning of an early night and casted the shape of terror on the window of the lab's door.

"Good." Dr. Hayes didn't realize when the halls grew quiet again. He didn't even know why those twelve were the last ones to answer his call, because oh, he didn't think a demon and a hellhound would be aiding this charade. Clara didn't know either, but she simply did not care.

While his jaw shivered, words came out as the background of his movements. "I want you to hear me, Venom, because you have my admiration." Hayes got himself ready. One last stand was him forcing himself to sit up for the sake of dignity.

"You are the reassurance we seek, that humans are not the greatest and that our condition can be suppressed." One look around made him remember each such storage room had at least one weapon depository, for self defense. He eyed a grenade, which was in his hand the moment the door opened. He threw it without hesitation, thinking a large figure would block the doorway and the blast would claim them both. Symbiotes were sensitive to fire after all.

But Clara, in her human form, stepped aside and the grenade flew past her, out on the window on the other side of the hallway.

"That was karma," Venom snickered.

She made one stop before getting up a floor to take him out and that stop was loading one bullet into a gun she fished from the ground of the massacre below. Now, she lifted it up and pointed it at the man himself.

"Clara," he raised his hands, grinning all the same, as if he wasn't at her mercy. Dr. Hayes' mouth shone in a green, unusual light. "You know this isn't the end-"

Clara pulled the trigger, took his right at having any last words and sent a bullet through his left eye. It went out the back of his skull and he fell as nothing more than a corpse, a pile of worthless flesh she could look at and smile.

The air she inhaled felt like freedom. Not just a freedom from O.M.N.I.U.M., but also a liberation from the invisible shackle holding her back from living her life.

"Nice shot!" Venom cheered.

She remembered to blink. Now, her gun lowered. "Thanks, I practiced."

Clara turned around, but that very step suspended mid-action, then fell as heavy as lead on the ground, making her inner balance swing and her hands helplessly grasp the doorframe. Her forehead fell on it.

"The air...," Venom's voice spoke to her in a distant echo. Her nails scratched the surface of any material she grasped and she forced herself to stumble out of the room, back on the hallway.

"The air was poisoned."

Standing on her own two feet was a challenge when reality started spinning and her breath hitched even if her nostrils flared. Hands had no security. Her head was heavy.

"Clara!"

She heard Marc voice long before she saw that blinding white costume of his. Why was it shinning? Why was it making her eyes hurt?

He saw her pupils get clouded, the veins of her eyes thicken. Her lips turned green before they turned purple.

"Stay away!" Clara's last nuance of clarity had her wave her hand, step back and stumble to a fall, only to get Marc away from her.

He watched her fall to the ground and only then realized the weight upon him. Marc blinked a few times. His light head swayed while he caught the last scent of the poison before Khonshu called a wind through the open window. His warrior had already been knelt, choked, caught crawling even but an inch closer to Clara before his head hit the ground.

author's note:    i sincerely am in shock that next chapter is the proper finale and then i only have to post the epilogue (aka the post credit scenes lmao) 😳 time passed sooo fast goshh

also, this book will include some final visuals after i post the epilogue, a section of graphics and such made for the book that didn't fit in the beginning section. if y'all wanna make anything for these characters, let me know and the piece will be featured there ✌💖 i prepared some posters to showcase there too hehe

next updates: tomorrow