When Ethan rose again—alive and seemingly untouched—Holm, always the meticulous and composed right hand of Jon Harmon, felt his spine go cold. Panic crept into his expression, shattering the calm that had defined his career.
He glanced at his boss, only to find that the fury on Jon Harmon's face had vanished. In its place was a dawning horror—the kind that only comes when a man realizes he's no longer in control.
Humans are naturally drawn to the unknown. But when the unknown defies the limits of logic and science—when it becomes unnatural—that curiosity turns to terror. And this? This was resurrection. Something that shouldn't happen.
Crack!
The ropes binding Ethan snapped as if they were made of brittle paper. He rose slowly from the chair, expression unreadable, and then dark, tar-like liquid began to surge from beneath his skin. It slithered out like a living entity, covering his body in a pulsating mass.
With a voice cold as steel and sharp with malice, he said, "Your turn's over. Now, it's mine."
As the words left his mouth, the transformation finished—standing in Ethan's place was a creature nearly three meters tall. Eyes narrowed to white slits, fangs like jagged glass, and a monstrous jaw that split his face with a devilish grin.
Venom had fully emerged.
Gasps filled the room. Guns trembled in the hands of trained bodyguards. Panic overtook discipline. This wasn't a man—this was a demon in a living exoskeleton. Their minds raced to find a category for him: mutant? alien? devil? But no training manual had a section for this.
Only now did they understand how Ethan had managed to kill Harvey Harmon and tear through his defenses like wet tissue. He wasn't human. He never had been. He was something else—something that shouldn't exist.
"Oh my God… What kind of monster is this?" one of the guards whispered, voice cracking under the weight of primal fear.
Even the most hardened among them began to pray. Their drills and combat scenarios had never included this. Their bullets? Meant for criminals, not creatures from another world.
Ethan—no, Venom—lifted one clawed hand slowly. The entire room froze.
Then with a snap, bullets embedded in his chest moments ago were ejected, sliding down his fingers like coins through a vending slot.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang!
In a single motion, he swept his arm from left to right, launching the bullets like high-velocity projectiles. They tore through the air with machine-gun speed, each shot finding its mark with merciless precision.
Within seconds, five of the eight men collapsed in bloodied heaps.
Holm, the poised and efficient lieutenant, was among the first to fall. One bullet shattered the bridge of his glasses, and the next split through his forehead, ending everything in an instant.
"Oh, come on!" Venom's voice growled within Ethan's mind, agitated. "Don't waste the good ones! I don't like brains that've stopped thinking. They taste like chalk. Fresh ones are way better!"
Ethan let out a low growl, halting his arm just as the last bullet slipped from his palm.
Then, in one fluid motion, he leapt.
He landed next to the two remaining guards with a crack of shattering floor tile. Before they could even scream, his massive hands wrapped around their heads and lifted them off the ground like ragdolls.
The symbiote's mouth opened impossibly wide, its fangs glinting with saliva. Then—
Crack! Crack!
Two clean bites. Two headless bodies dropped to the ground, their necks geysering blood like broken pipes.
Jon Harmon was the only one left.
Frozen.
Watching.
Unable to move or scream.
Before him lay the mangled remains of his elite bodyguards—men who had once stood between him and death. Now they were corpses. And the thing that killed them was still hungry.
The monster turned its gaze on him.
Jon Harmon snapped.
His mind shattered under the pressure of everything he'd seen—the bullets, the regeneration, the grotesque transformation, the methodical killing. Panic surged through him like acid through veins.
He staggered backward, tripping over a body, scrambling like a man trying to claw his way out of a nightmare.
But there was no waking up.
Because Ethan was real.
And he had come for vengeance.
He was still burning with rage over his brother's death, but everything that had unfolded since that day had steadily dismantled the worldview Jon Harmon had built over four decades. Reality, as he knew it, was crumbling—and the creature now approaching him was the final blow.
Ethan took a slow, deliberate step forward, his monstrous form radiating malice. Panic seized Jon. He stumbled back toward the nearby cabinet, yanked open the top drawer, and pulled out a compact MAC-10 submachine gun. Even though he had seen bullets do nothing earlier, he wasn't ready to surrender to death—not yet.
The barrel flared with automatic fire as he sprayed Ethan with a desperate burst. But the creature didn't even flinch.
Ethan calmly advanced through the hailstorm of bullets. He reached Jon in moments, effortlessly lifting him with one massive hand. With the other, he grabbed the still-firing weapon and crushed it into a mangled chunk of steel, the smoking barrel hissing against his fingers.
"You already know this toy doesn't work on me," Ethan rasped, voice layered with Venom's deep growl.
He leaned in, venomous breath hot against Jon's skin.
"But don't worry. You'll be joining your dear brother soon. You two can rot together in Hell."
Jon's entire body trembled. The fury, pride, and arrogance he once wore like armor had all vanished. His legs dangled helplessly in the air. His mouth moved, struggling to speak through a crushed windpipe.
"You… you're a demon… A devil…"
The words were barely audible, choked out between clenched teeth and fear. But Ethan heard them.
He tilted his head, mock curiosity in his glowing eyes. Then he smirked, baring rows of impossibly sharp fangs.
"No, no, no…" he whispered, savoring each word. "Not a devil. Devils and gods can't control me. I don't take orders from Hell or Heaven."
With a thunderous growl, the two voices inside Ethan—human and symbiote—spoke as one:
"We… are Venom."
And with that, Ethan's monstrous jaws clamped down.
One savage bite.
Jon Harmon's scream never had time to leave his throat. Blood sprayed in an arc across the floor, and his lifeless body hit the ground with a wet thud, headless and still twitching.
Plop!
The moment his body dropped, Ethan's form began to shift. The hulking mass of muscle and symbiote contracted, pulling inward, morphing back into a more human-like silhouette—though still wrapped in the sleek, shadowy armor of Venom's hidden form.
Then Venom's voice echoed in Ethan's mind.
"Heads up. We've got company—coming up the stairs. A lot of them."
Ethan grinned, his blackened eyes gleaming.
"Sounds like we're having a buffet tonight."
He turned toward the heavy metal door just as it began to rattle from the other side. The goons were about to burst in, weapons primed and fingers on the trigger.
Too slow.
The door flew off its hinges, shattering into twisted metal as Ethan exploded through it with monstrous speed. His sudden appearance caught the armed gang members off guard. Several hesitated just long enough to die.
Ethan's hands had morphed into clawed blades—razor-sharp, gleaming with a metallic black sheen. With graceful brutality, he carved through the crowd like a shadow with substance.
Gunfire erupted in a frenzy. Bullets rained in from every direction, ricocheting off the walls and Venom's armor. But they had no effect. He moved like smoke—erratic, lethal, untouchable.
One swipe to the left—three throats opened at once.
A leap to the right—he crushed a man beneath his feet, tearing off another's arm as he landed.
Heads were swallowed whole. Spines cracked. Blood poured across the tile floor like water from broken pipes.
Within a minute, it was over.
The once-packed corridor now lay silent, soaked in blood and littered with mangled corpses. Some bodies were missing limbs. Others, missing heads. And some… were barely recognizable as human.
In the center of it all stood Ethan, his form shrouded in the obsidian sheen of Venom, his chest rising and falling slowly. He looked like something summoned from the darkest pit of another dimension. Something not meant to walk the Earth.
A ghost made of hunger and vengeance.
"Ahhh… what a satisfying, delicious meal."
Venom's head emerged from Ethan's shoulder, tongue flicking out lazily.
"This… this was the best feast we've had since landing on this miserable planet. I don't even have a stomach, and I feel full."
Ethan didn't respond. He didn't need to.
The silence of the dead was answer enough.