Today was a normal day for Alex Hunt.

He worked as a programmer in Silicon Valley. As nice as it may sound, it's not. But he doesn't complain, he's satisfied with his life.

His love life is also going strong. He was dating a bombshell of a girl and she was pretty interesting too. They'd been dating for a few weeks.

Yet, there's something missing. He always feels that there's something that he's not doing right. This normalcy in his life, as satisfying as it sounds, isn't something that truly satisfies him.

'I hope that Quantumania is good…' He thought as he walked hand-in-hand with his girlfriend to the theatre. They had date night tonight.

He was an avid Marvel fan, he'd kept up with not only the MCU but also the comics and his girlfriend shared that taste.

That's why they were watching an MCU movie for date night instead of a romantic movie.

At this point he noticed something.

He noticed two bright headlights coming towards them.

He didn't have any time to think anything as he pushed his girlfriend of a few weeks ahead of himself and jumped ahead after her.

Sadly, that momentary lapse where he pushed her away was enough for the huge truck to reach him.

At this point, everything was in slow motion for Alex.

He recalled his life and realized that he hadn't done anything monumental yet.

He had so many ambitions, but he'd never fulfilled any of them.

'If I can live…' As he thought that, the bumper of the truck hit him and flung him away.

He was in the air after trying to jump away from his spot which made his body get flung ever further.

The last thing he heard was his girlfriend's scream as his head banged on the concrete.

…

'Fuck, what's going on?' When Alex regained consciousness, he felt weird. That was the best way that he could term it as.

He couldn't feel his body, but he knew that it existed.

'Did someone put my brain in a jar or something…' That was his first thought in his current situation.

He didn't know what having one's brain in a jar would feel like to the consciousness within that brain but he thought it would feel like his current situation.

He felt like he had no limbs, all he felt was some sort of fluid.

He wasn't feeling any phantom pain or anything of the sort which would be the case normally if he'd lost his body.

He was really confused about his current situation. He was trying to move what should be his limbs but all he felt was the movement of some sort of fluid.

«Memory influx initiating»

There was a sudden prickling sensation that made Alex feel like someone was invading his mind.

Slowly, new memories and information appeared in his mind.

He learned of his current situation from those memories.

'A symbiote, huh… How ironic…' He laughed self-deprecatingly at his current state.

He was sealed within a space shuttle alongside multiple others of his own kind.

They were all on their way to Earth. Sent by an unknown entity. They weren't given any mission as he learned from the original memories of the symbiote.

Not that there were many memories there, to begin with.

It was like a blank slate that had woken up for the first time within the shuttle.

'Janette…' His next thought was about his girlfriend that he'd left back home.

'I hope she's all right…'

He didn't have too many attachments to his life in the last world, his parents were dead and he wasn't particularly close to anyone other than his girlfriend.

While there was some bitterness over losing his home of almost thirty years, what came after was a rush.

A rush of excitement. A rush of excitement for what was about to come. It was something any fanboy would feel in this kind of situation.

But even that excitement was momentary. As he remembered the dangers of the world where he actually was.

As an avid reader of the Marvel comics, he knew of the problems that came with being a symbiote.

'Fuck, Knull…' He remembered the creator of the symbiotes and the kind of influence that he had on them.

'Let's hope he's still trapped.' He gave up on following that train of thought.

'Couldn't I have been sent to a normal fucking world…' As exciting as this was, he was more concerned with keeping himself alive.

He felt a sense of urgency. He didn't know what was exactly going on right now and he needed information.

He didn't have the luxury of panicking right now and he knew that.

The first thing that he turned to was to look for the source of the voice that he heard that told him about the memory influx.

'You there?'

'Helloo?'

'Anyone?'

'System?' He hoped that he would have some sort of cheat to help him out.

There was no response.

He was disappointed but not disheartened.

He knew that he was a character with the highest potential for growth right now.

Venom and the symbiotes— in general, have one glaring flaw. Their undeveloped minds.

They don't have the creativity or even the full mental coherence of a human. This was one of the biggest limitations of the symbiotes in general.

Right now, his most important thought was to free himself from this flimsy containment and understand how long it would be to their destination.

His chamber wasn't made to be a seal that would actually suppress him. It wasn't exactly impossible for him to unlock it after fiddling around with it for a few minutes.

'Or was it a few hours…' His sense of time was a little flimsy as a symbiote.

A lot of the basic human instincts were missing and were sort of going haywire within Alex's mind.

Majorly because he wasn't a human. He wasn't even a humanoid species. He was a damn slime to be brutally honest.

When he got out of that containment chamber, he looked, or more accurately, felt around for the control panel.

He didn't have eyes. The only sense he possessed right now was touch.

Although loud sounds were a major weakness for the symbiotes, they couldn't inherently hear.

They could only be damaged by the sonic vibrations caused by loud sounds without actually registering the sounds.

He would have to find a host to get the reference and energy to create a humanoid form and get the basic senses.

He was unsuccessful in his endeavor after what felt like a few hours.

It was impossible for him to recognize the control panel in his current state.

'So, now what?' Alex was bored. He didn't know what to do.

'I could devour the others to get stronger…' He remembered the symbiote's inherent instinct to devour other symbiotes to be able to turn into stronger beings.

Strangely, he didn't feel anything wrong with devouring other symbiotes. Instead, he felt like his instincts were driving him to do exactly that.

'Well…' As weird as he felt doing this, he knew that to survive and maybe even flourish, he would need to get all the strength that he can get.

He first went to one of the other chambers.

They were all identical to his.

Tens of different chambers held different symbiotes.

He decided to start with one of them.

He felt around and opened one of the chambers.

Instantly, he could feel the presence of the other symbiote as he opened the chamber to release it.

'The hive-mind…' He remembered the presence of the hive-mind of symbiotes. Throughout the universe, all symbiotes were connected to the hive-mind of the symbiotes.

'I guess this shuttle is suppressing that connection for some reason…'

The symbiote in front of him was also a blank slate, having only woken up within the ship.

He hesitated after realizing that he could actually control these symbiotes.

He was much smarter than the average symbiote and could actively influence them.

'Let's devour some of them first. I'll see which option's better before deciding on what to do.'

The next second, Alex merged with that symbiote that was seemingly lost in the connection that it was feeling with Alex.

«Merger initiated»

There it was again. That prompt.

Alex didn't have any eyes or else he would've seen a blue box floating in front of his eyes with that text.

But he still instinctively felt its presence.

He didn't have the time to delve into whatever he had, system or not as he was assaulted by a feeling of utter euphoria when he merged with that symbiote.

He felt himself intertwine with each particle of that symbiote which didn't even put up a fight. It felt like it was natural to be devoured by Alex's symbiote after observing his massive presence within the hive-mind.

That feeling lasted for quite a while before the merger process was completed.

Alex felt around and felt that his size had increased and he was now double the mass that he was initially. There was no stress on his brain either. The main reason was that he was the bigger being and another reason was that the symbiote was a blank slate. There was essentially no memory to be devoured from it.

«Merger completed»

He felt the presence of that prompt again.

'Status?' He tried a different variant of calling out the system.

'Nothing? Do, I need to devour more symbiotes? Or is it something else entirely?' Alex decided to not pay it any attention for now and think of his gains after devouring that symbiote.

The first thing he tested was the main reason that he devoured the symbiote in the first place.

He tried to split a part of his body from himself and form a different symbiote.

'It worked!' He could feel two different symbiotes connected to his consciousness.

He had full and absolute control over both of those bodies.

They essentially worked as his own limbs.

'I'm merging with them all.' He decided.

He knew that it was a risk, but he decided to take that risk. Especially since he had a way to mitigate everything.

He slowly opened the chambers one by one and started devouring all of those symbiotes.

When he'd devoured a total of 39 symbiotes he was done. This ship had a total of forty symbiotes.

When they were finally finished, Alex did the smartest move and split out half of his amalgamated body.

After devouring 39 other symbiotes, he was already pretty large.

That half again split into 40 parts, which went back into all of the chambers, locking them again.

This way, Alex had probably saved himself from being discovered by that being who sent them here.

He'd also gotten the ability to clone himself many times over.

He would need to experiment to discover more abilities, but his main priority was to find a host.

The symbiote alone was not enough. Especially without copying the genetic makeup of other beings.

He'd filled all of the chambers with a symbiote and his main body was within the shuttle.

He was still connected to them since they were all sharing the same consciousness. The chambers were only suppressing the hive-mind connection. They weren't able to disrupt the connection he had with the parts that he'd split from his main body.

Now, all that was left was to find out more about his abilities until he got to earth.

Soon after he'd started understanding his abilities, there was a fizzling sound within the shuttle.

Alex thought that there was some damage or a breach and was about to check things but he noticed that it was the sound of each of those chambers being ejected from the shuttle.

'What?' He was confused. He'd thought that all the symbiotes would be going to the same destination.

Instead, the shuttle with his main body was left stranded in space while the 40 chambers filled with his clones were sent out to some unknown destinations.

He didn't have a sense of direction as a symbiote but he could feel each of them going to vastly different locations.

At least he could tell that their destination was on different planets.

'Weren't we supposed to go to Earth?' He thought as he remembered the extra information that he'd gotten from his influx of memories.

As confused as he was he decided to start moving as he felt one of his bodies reach its destination.

==================

Legend:

"Speech"

'Thoughts'

«System»

[Telepathy]

==================

Give me power stones, please... This is a new story...

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