Chapter 111: Outbreak III

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Many civilians were holed up in buildings or their vehicles that littered the now mostly empty streets of Midtown, while very few were running the streets in hopes of being able to escape the unknown threat before them. Most of the time, however, if anyone was spotted in the middle of a street, they would immediately be abducted by a Bolter, the name given to the ones that could seemingly use Spider-Man's Godspeed energy.

If they weren't abducted, they would simply become food for the Deranged, the name given to the human-like zombies roaming the streets.

Those in buildings were also victims of the Deranged, however, the Mimics would be the most common thing found near residential areas or inside buildings. The Mimics were the ones capable of appearing just like Spider-Man and also imitating his voice, luring hundreds of New Yorkers in just the short amount of time they'd been active.

In just an hour, the word was spread through social media and news outlets to those in New York who had access to the internet. They knew that it wasn't safe outside, they knew to not trust the mimics, and they knew that Oscorp was the only place that would supposedly be safe as Harry Osborn had already established that it would be used as a safe haven whenever a catastrophe would strike the city or the world.

So far, symbiotes were only running rampant in Midtown. Those outside of Midtown were ordered to stay indoors at all times. For the time being, Liz, Felicia, and Cindy's parents were safe, though they still hadn't heard from Flash or Gwen. The three heroes thought about bringing them to Oscorp, however, preparations to make the building safe were not fully realized. Bringing them from a safe part of the city to the trenches didn't seem like a good idea.

Inside an apartment complex that was crawling with Deranged, people were hiding beneath beds, inside closets, or wherever else they could stay concealed in order to avoid being eaten by the monsters. Occasionally, they'd hear "Hello? Is anyone in here?", signaling that a Mimic was nearby and was searching for them, however, those that were aware did not come out, despite wishing that it was really him.

A woman and her daughter both found themselves hiding in the girl's closet, trembling and trying their hardest not to make a single sound. Through the walls, they could hear the Deranged stomping around looking for anyone else to eat in their neighbors' apartments, sometimes they'd even hear the Mimics repeating the same voice line over and over like an action figure. "Hello? Is anyone in here?"

With each time Spider-Man's voice was heard, they wanted more than anything to believe that it was really him, however, they knew that it wasn't. It didn't matter how badly they wanted it to be him, it wasn't possible for it to be him. They knew that Spider-Man likely wasn't coming for them.

"Hello? Is anyone in here?" once again, they could hear Spider-Man's voice coming through the wall, however, what they heard next would induce a pit to form in their stomachs. "I'm in here!" a voice shouted out, a voice from someone who must've not been in the know, the voice of a victim giving away his location to his butcher.

"Spider-Man, I'm in here!" the same voice called out to his hero. Then there was a long, drawn-out silence. 'Spider-Man' didn't confirm or deny that he had heard the voice, he was just completely silent.

.

.

.

A few moments later, the voice of the person begging for help was heard again, however, it was the sounds of their horrified shrieks as the person who was looking for them wasn't really Spider-Man, as those who were in the know deduced. Once again, a person fell victim to a Mimic's mimicry.

The mother and daughter held each other tighter as they could hear the Mimic and the man chasing each other around right next door through the thin walls until there was one final shout...

Then there was nothing but silence. They could only imagine what was going on in the other room, but they didn't even want to know what exactly happened to him.

A few minutes passed and the mother and daughter could hear the sounds of someone walking into their apartment.

"Hello?" the voice, Spider-Man's voice, said as footsteps quickly moving on broken glass could be heard. "Is anyone in here?" Upon hearing that same voice line again, the girl and the mother began to weep silently inside the closet. They knew that voice line, it was a Mimic and it knew that they were in that building, it just didn't know exactly where.

The footsteps continued until they were right outside the girl's bedroom door. Slowly, they could hear the sound of the door creaking open, followed by more footsteps making their way into the room. Through the slits of the closet door, they could see Spider-Man, or whatever it was, walking into the room before looking around with urgency.

Just as it looked as if he were about to leave, Spider-Man locked eyes with the closet. Immediately, the Mom leaned away from the closet before Spider-Man quickly walked up to it and opened the door.

"AH-" just before the woman could let out a scream, Spider-Man covered her mouth. "Hey, hey, hey. Calm down, it's really me." Spider-Man retracted part of his mask to show his mouth, opening it to show the woman and the little girl his teeth. "No fangs." he told them quietly. "I'm going to get you two out of here, okay? C'mon."

Spider-Man extended his hand to the mother and child, but they were still hesitant. Not much was known about the Mimics, so they weren't sure if this was all part of their routine. "I'd have eaten you already, those things attack on sight. Please, just come with me."

Hearing his words, the mother grabbed her daughter by the arm and took Spider-Man's hand before he led them both to the girl's bedroom window. Spider-Man opened it up and helped the girls out of the building before scanning the area to be sure that it was safe to proceed.

There were Bolters zipping around beneath them and a few Deranged, but they weren't paying them any mind. "Climb on my back, Ma'am. I got your daughter." Spider-Man picked up the girl with one arm and lowered himself so that the woman could climb on. The second the woman was on his back, Spider-Man shot out a web at a nearby building and began swinging away with the two of them.

Beneath them, Deranged began following them on foot for a few seconds before giving up. The Bolters would zip up buildings using Godspeed and try to leap at them, but Spider-Man was sure to not let any of them touch the mother and her daughter by keeping a safe distance from them, despite him only being able to swing with a single hand.

It wasn't long before Spider-Man reached Oscorp with the mother and daughter, swinging over the walls protecting the building before delivering them to the dropoff destination, which was getting filled to the brim with hundreds of citizens. Since there was no way of telling who was infected and who was safe, no one was allowed in until the scientists hard at work inside were able to develop the means to detect the symbiote.

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They were also working with Quintin Beck, who Harry had released from prison and immediately transported to Oscorp. They wanted to borrow and modify his technology to create a barrier around the city to keep the symbiotes inside, while also creating better defenses for Oscorp's building.

Immediately upon landing, the Sable forces wearing their white battle armor pointed their flamethrowers at him, mistaking him for a Mimic. "Can y'all relax? You don't need to point those things at me every time I land." Osborn's guns for hire lowered their weapons before looking back toward the walls of the facility.

Eren glanced up to see dozens of soldiers using their flamethrowers to ward off the few symbiotes that made it this far outward already, most of which were backing off due to fire being their one weakness. However, many of them were beginning to become daring enough to challenge the flames. This tactic wouldn't hold them all back for much longer, especially when their numbers grew large enough to overwhelm the Sable army.

"Spider-Man, we need you inside. They said there was something important that we needed to go over and you needed to be there for it." Harry said from behind, having a look of distress on his face. "Just for a few minutes, then you can get back to patrolling."

Eren knew that whatever Harry needed was likely very important, so he nodded and followed him into the facility. As they walked, Harry gave him the rundown of what was happening inside. "While you were gone, Beck arrived and he's working with the guys upstairs to create a barrier. Currently, they're designing a barrier that is capable of locking molecules in place, creating a physical barrier while also emitting itself at such a frequency, a symbiote would fry itself if it were to attempt to pass through it. If a human were to pass through, they'd be completely fine."

"So you're thinking about evacuating people through this barrier?" Eren asked, hiding his uncertain expression under his mask.

"Well, that's my issue. I don't think it's a good idea, in case the barrier malfunctions or something, we shouldn't let anyone leave. What do you think?"

"I was thinking the same thing. We need to keep everyone holed up in here until we can figure out a way to stop this mess. We need to find Venom. Has there been any word on the Prime Symbiote's location?" Eren knew that if he could defeat Venom, it would help stop the spread of the disease, however, he also knew that he may not be strong enough to fight him.

"I don't think so. Cindy has been using her Silk-Sense to look for it, but as you know it's useless against symbiotes. Can't you search your memories for a place he might appear?" Harry didn't understand how the whole memory thing worked. To him, going through the hundreds of memories must've been as easy as remembering any other memory, but that was far from the case.

"No, my memories won't help. Everything is too different now. Venom could be anywhere right now." Spider-Man and the New Goblin took the elevator upstairs, eventually finding themselves in a room filled with dozens of scientists, a woman with silver hair, and a few S.H.I.E.L.D. agents, along with a hologram of Nick Fury. Lily was also in the background, being the eyes and ears for Silk who was still out patrolling.

Immediately upon seeing Spider-Man, Nick Fury confronted them. "I heard that you saw this coming from a mile away, Mr. Parker. I heard you spoke to a future version of yourself who WARNED you that this was about to happen and yet you kept that valuable information a secret?" Nick Fury was pissed. While he was protecting the Earth off-world, the planet was endangered and he felt that he could have done something to prevent that.

"I didn't tell you because my future self told your future self. Wanna know what happened? Thanos, yeah I know about Thanos, doesn't get defeated by whoever you guys have out there in space fighting him. Guess where he goes? Straight down to earth and gets a hold of the Prime Symbiote himself. Wanna know what he does with that? He killed me and all my friends and all your heroes. So yeah, I didn't tell you because this whole situation would have been fucked from the start. I thought I had it all handled. I was wrong."

Spider-Man going off on Fury silenced the room, even Nick Fury himself was silenced for a moment. "Do you have any idea how to beat this so-called Prime Symbiote and fix this mess, Mr. Parker?" Fury asked.

"I thought I did, but I'm running out of ideas now. I thought I destroyed it, burned it to a crisp, but I-" Eren felt an insurmountable amount of guilt overflow his body. He did everything perfectly. Created a machine to destroy the symbiote, burned every single last bit of it off of his body, and even triple-checked to make sure it was all gone.

"I do have one last plan." Spider-Man couldn't bring himself to even say what it was that he had planned as a failsafe. It was a backup plan that he had created by combining all of the knowledge of how the invasion went in every other timeline. "Let's focus on creating this barrier, and then we can worry about what happens next. If scolding me was all you had planned, I'm going to go out and help more people."

"Hold it, Parker. We do have something else. We believe we may know the location of a hive." As Fury said this, Spider-Man's lenses frowned slightly.

"A hive? Like, where these guys are being made, right?" it was obvious that this is what Fury meant, but Eren wanted to be sure.

"Precisely. We want you and Harry to go and investigate, take this bag with you. We will allow Silk to continue helping survivors since the Mimics seem to only be capable of copying you. We'll release a statement saying that only Silk will be rescuing people for the time being." Before Spider-Man could give a response, Harry jumped into the conversation.

"What about Oscorp?" he asked.

"Silver Sable..." Nick Fury pointed to the silver-haired lady, who was the leader of the Sable private military group as he spoke. "... and her army will protect Oscorp while you're gone. Along with S.H.I.E.L.D."

"What about all the people outside?" Spider-Man asked. "Who's going to protect them? No offense but we need someone strong here with them. I'll go on my own."

Harry wanted to go to the hive as well, but he knew that it would be best for him to stay put for now. "Yeah, he's right. He can handle himself."

"Alright then, Parker. You're on your own. Keep us updated." Nick Fury didn't trust Eren on his own, that's why he planned on sending Harry with him. The supposed hive was also likely far too dangerous to send one of his agents, so he reluctantly let Spider-Man go on his own.

"Send me the location, I'll be getting going." Spider-Man walked over to Nick Fury and grabbed the bag from his hand before immediately leaving the room and making his way out of the building in search of this so-called hive.

However, what he didn't know is that the hive wouldn't be the only thing waiting for him at that exact location.

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