The crimson sun bled its last over the shattered skyline of New Neo York, 2147. Ghostly spires of glass and steel loomed like tombstones in a dead metropolis, their jagged peaks scraping a twilight sky streaked with ash and embers. A low frequency hum echoed through the air—distant anti-grav shuttles whisking away the city’s elite to sanctuaries in the stratosphere. But down here, where the smog clung to you like poison and hope was a currency more precious than platinum, something moved. Or, rather, someone.
Gwen “Stacy” Kallorn crouched atop the skeletal remains of an old data node, her symbiotic suit rippling like a living, restless thing. The black and white tendrils flexed and shifted across her lithe form, mirroring her growing unease. Her short blonde hair clung to her sweat-dappled forehead, and her pale blue eyes cut through the gloom, scanning the desolate streets below. Her suit—her curse and her power—glowed faintly in the dim, casting spidery patterns of light onto the cracked asphalt below. The sharp arcs of an alien spider motif framed her chest, the black ink-like designs spreading outward to form creeping, vein-like tendrils across her body. This was no simple costume. It pulsed with a life of its own, unnatural, electric.
A scream pierced the air—not far, maybe two blocks down near the abandoned terraforming district. Gwen’s jaw tightened. Another attack? She whispered into the void of her mind. They don’t stop, do they?
“No… they never do,” came the answering voice—deep, alien, and definitively not her own. It wasn’t precisely venomous, though it always sounded as if it might turn that way. A voice born of hunger. It wasn’t just the symbiote whispering. It was Venom.
Gwen vaulted from the node, the symbiote extending a sharp tendril to catch the structure’s edge, whipping her downward in elegant arcs through the haze. The city blurred into streaks of light and shadow as she descended. Below her, the terraforming units stood like hulking beasts, their once shining exteriors dulled by rust and decay. She landed hard, her suit absorbing the shock as she scanned the scene with a predatory intensity.
A gang of thugs had cornered someone, a young man clutching a package tight to his chest. He was bleeding, his breath ragged. Tech salvagers—low-level scavengers who fed on the desperate. Their leader, a burly mech-arm enforcer with a hydraulic spine, loomed over his quarry, gears hissing with every movement.
“We said,” the mech-arm growled, voice modulated through a crackling speaker, “no one steals from the Syndicate. Hand it over.”
The boy’s eyes flicked up, meeting Gwen’s. His lips formed a plea for help, though he was too terrified to speak it aloud. She didn’t hesitate.
The suit moved before she did. Tendrils lashed out from her arms, crashing into the gang with whip-like precision. The mech-arm enforcer spun, only to meet Gwen’s boot in a bone-crunching roundhouse. His body slammed into one of the rusting terraforming units, leaving a crater in the metal. Gwen landed gracefully, symbiote claws extending from her hands in wicked arcs. Her voice was low, chilling.
“You’re done.”
The gang scattered like roaches, but the mech-arm wasn’t so lucky. The symbiote surged, its inky black tendrils wrapping around his throat and lifting him from the ground effortlessly. Gwen’s eyes narrowed as Venom’s voice rasped through her mind.
“End him.”
She hesitated, her claws hovering an inch from the man’s exposed neck. Her pulse thundered in her ears. The symbiote writhed, impatient. Gwen took a deep, shaking breath. Slowly, deliberately, she released him, the suit retracting its hungry appendages. The enforcer crumpled to the ground, coughing, and scrambled into the shadows. The boy stared at her, wide-eyed, clutching his package like it was all that kept him alive.
“Go,” Gwen said, her voice softer now, though tinged with regret. “And don’t look back.”
The boy nodded wordlessly and disappeared into the abyss of the city.
Gwen turned away, her heart a battlefield. This isn’t justice, she thought. This is survival. Her suit tightened around her, as though whispering its agreement. High above, the super-shuttles continued their luminous ascent, oblivious to the darkness below. Gwen melted into the shadows, her silhouette swallowed by the neon haze of a city caught between rebirth and annihilation.
Somewhere in the depths of her mind, Venom purred.
The Source…check out the article that inspired this amazing short story: Cosplay Ideas: Sleek White and Black Spider Gwenom Outfit
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