Chapter 16: Contagious madness, part 1

With a heavy groan Stans began to regain consciousness, and, judging by her appearance, she did not feel well. In addition to the accelerated aging I'd already noted, she was missing hair from half of her skull, and the yellow sclerae of her pupils were streaked with a bright red network of capillaries.

"What is it?" Stans whispered in a low whisper. Then she saw the worried face of the former probation worker. "Bobby?"

"It's all right, Doc," she tried to comfort the woman, "we got you out, don't worry."

"What's the last thing you remember?" I asked.

Stance shifted her perplexed gaze to me, then looked around, noticed Deadpool, but didn't let on that the half man, with a face like Freddy Krueger's, surprised her.

"The creature's in the hospital, and it freaked out and attacked me... and then it's dark, I can't remember anything."

"That's how..." I wondered...

Is the doctor's accelerated aging the work of the symbiote or is it a consequence of her experiments with the super-soldier formula?

"In any case, you need to be examined and taken to the hospital." - I said.

Here our nice conversation was interrupted by the click of a shutter.

"Get away from her, little one!" smirking, Deadpool ordered.

The mercenary had a pistol in her good hand, and was leaning on a chair in front of her with her crippled hand. But Bobby, seeing the gun pointed at her, though frightened, did not leave her friend, on the contrary: she covered Stans with her body.

"What are you doing?" I asked, stepping a little to the side so I wouldn't be in the line of fire.

"This isn't an "A&Q" show! Come on, Bobby, don't push fate's tits! You know what my rule is? Shoot first, think later. Now it's time to shoot!" Deadpool threatened with increasing fury, "Get away!" She yelled toward the end.

Bobbie flinched and jerked to the side, but suddenly she wheezed and was turned back. Stance, who had looked like a frail old woman a second ago, rose easily to her feet, shielding Bobbie's body from Deadpool.

"You piss me off, you stupid bitch," Stans hissed from behind Bobby's shoulder.

"Stupid bitch who figured out your lies," Deadpool grinned back.

"You're all just lowlifes, inferior creatures," Stans went on, squeezing Bobby's throat violently, which made the girl begin to choke rapidly, "Give me that thing, Parker!" - Stans turned in my direction.

Her eyes were filled with bloodlust and madness. She was staring at the symbiote tank with the frozen, unblinking gaze of a psychopath, but she kept one hand on Bobby's weight and her body shielded from Deadpool. The serum she'd created must have worked after all. And aging and manic insanity were side effects. I can see why she needed the equipment. She was trying to correct her old mistakes.

"Whatever you say, scarecrow," I took a step back and slowly raised my hands.

Stance had a couple of steps to take to the container, but she must have sensed that the mercenary wasn't going to let her take those steps:

"You shoot, and the girl dies first," Stans threatened.

"You have me confused with someone else," the mercenary smirked back and pulled the trigger. Two booming shots rang out, the bullets going straight into the ex-con's chest, but Stance ducked to the side with an agility uncanny for her aging body, and then threw her human shield like a projectile at Deadpool. The mercenary had no more chance of avoiding a collision than Bobbie had of dodging her own bullets. Together they went tumbling across the floor.

"New rule!" Deadpool muttered from a dark corner. "Shoot instantly, and don't think at all!"

Except she had nothing to shoot with at the moment.

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As soon as Stans let go of the hostage, I shot a regular webbing from the left web-shooter right into the woman's face. Immediately afterward, another electric shock to the legs, just as she lunged forward. The doctor, tangled in the web, fell to the floor and rolled backwards, straight toward the symbiote container. She desperately stretched her arms toward her goal, but in doing so she only helped me to swaddle herself.

"Don't get your hopes up, my web isn't so easy to break, not with your puny powers," I grinned evilly.

"God, Parker, you're full of surprises, pouring your white trash all over the old lady! You ought to do the same to me! By the way, if you want to say goodbye to your girlfriend, now would be a good time, I shot both her lungs out," the chatty mercenary spoke from her corner. "Yeah. That was awkward, I'm sorry."

"Fuck!" I exclaimed and rushed over to Bobby. "How's she doing?! Why the fuck did you even shoot her?"

"Hey, Mr. Sticky Hands, you didn't tell me you still had tricks up your sleeve! What was I supposed to do? Give the symbiote to that bitch?"

Bobby's eyes had already rolled back, blood was pouring out of his mouth and chest wounds in powerful jolts. Shit! Severe internal bleeding, both lungs damaged, multiple fractures from the fall-she wouldn't survive without immediate medical attention! And where's the fucking Shield when you need it so badly? Were my assumptions wrong and Deadpool managed not to catch her tail?

Symbiote! He can save her, but it's a risk! Bobby said that Venom was not aggressive, and the behavior after merging with Stans could be explained by the woman's own insanity, but this is only speculation. Even in his weakened state, Venom is still extremely dangerous. My gaze fell on the unaccustomedly quiet Deadpool.

"I have a case for you!" I say and walk over to what's left of the woman's body.

"Right now? I didn't think it would turn you on..." I grabbed the mercenary by the remnants of her surviving suit and lifted her up, she was quite light, "Hey, I like it rough too, but at least let me regenerate to my hips!"

I dragged Deadpool to the back of the truck and slipped my phone into her hands.

"If Venom gets pissed off, you turn the music back on!"

"So no sex again?" Deadpool asked angrily.

I grabbed the vial of symbiote and hurried over to a hushed Bobby. The sealed lid peeled off with a loud sound, but nothing happened. I flipped the bucket over, and the symbiote fell onto the girl's chest in a limp ink blot. But even drenched in human blood, the creature was in no hurry to show signs of life.

Fuck, did I kill it with too much music? Shit, shit, I should have somehow given Deadpool a sign that I could disarm Stans, what a stupid mistake!

Wait, what is that? The size of the ink blot was shrinking, the symbiote slowly retracting into Bobby's body, right through the holes left by Deadpool's shots. I held my breath, waiting for further changes, but nothing happened: Bobby's heart was still beating slowly, only the blood stopped oozing from the wounds.

"Come on, Venom, can you fix her? Give me a sign." and he heard me.

A thin twig extended from the girl's shoulder, as if it didn't even have the strength to get off the floor, it just slid across the ground for a while, forming two simple letters.

"NO."

"But why? What do you want?"

The offshoot hissed, folding itself into a new short lettering:

"Resources," and then an arrow formed from the last letter, pointing to a woman spelt with my web.

He wants Stans' body so he can use his resources to heal it. I remembered how Venom in my past world had offered to eat a passerby to heal my wounds after a fight, but it turns out he could have done it anyway, just wanted to provoke me into killing him. I don't think it's the same case, though.

Killing a psychopath to save a friend. That's... acceptable.

I turned to Stans, who, unable to break free of her web, had only to mooch and roll her eyes, and went for Deadpool's katana, but then another idea occurred to me.

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