Selene clocked the men drifting toward the car before her boots even touched the curb.
She had read the S.H.I.E.L.D. file on the way over, her cold, immortal mind dissecting the parameters of the Asgardian's threat. Lorelei's charm wasn't an active spell that required a wand or an incantation; it was passive and terrifyingly constant. It required zero intent, only proximity. Selene felt the unnatural, honey-thick pressure of it in the air, a psychic miasma that washed over her and immediately shattered against the ancient, necrotic ice of her own mutant telepathy.
The men gathering behind the idling luxury car, however, had no such defenses. A delivery driver had stopped dead in the street, his truck door left hanging open. Two businessmen stood perfectly still on the asphalt, briefcases dangling loosely from slack grips. Their eyes were glassy, their pupils blown wide, trapped in an invisible gravitational pull they couldn't even perceive.
Lorelei sat in the plush leather back seat, the window rolled down. She looked out at Selene and Melina with the mild, profoundly bored expression of someone who had already won most conversations centuries before they even started.
"We're here on behalf of the Dragon Ball Tournament organizers," Selene said. She stopped at the door, her pale skin stark against her dark tactical gear. She kept her voice entirely even, immune to the aura. "We need to verify a few things with you." She tilted her head slightly toward the enthralled pedestrians. "Send them away."
Lorelei blinked, her perfect brow furrowing a fraction of an inch. The organizers. That meant Smith Doyle's people.
She was still parsing that jagged piece of information when a sudden resonance vibrated through the base of her skull. It wasn't a sound, but the immense, cosmic weight of Heimdall's gaze bridging the lightyears from Asgard to Midgard. His voice echoed in her mind, quiet, but carrying the undeniable, crushing certainty of shifting tectonic plates.
They're his people. The Watcher paused, leaving no room for negotiation. No doubt. Exchange the Dragon Ball for the entry token and prepare. All balls are now claimed—the competition phase is next.
Lorelei's posture shifted slightly, the arrogant languor tightening into something far more attentive. She looked back at the small crowd of men hopelessly tethered to her bumper. She let a warm, silken smile bleed into her voice.
"My apologies, gentlemen. I overreacted," Lorelei purred, the sound wrapping around them like a physical caress. "Ms. Selene means me no harm. You can go."
The spell snapped. The men blinked rapidly, staggering backward a half-step as if waking from a deep, narcotic sleep. They dispersed slowly, reluctantly, their heads turning to watch over their shoulders from the sidewalk, pulled away only by the sheer force of her vocal command.
Selene watched them go, her jaw tight. She had understood Lorelei's ability in theory before today, analyzing it purely as a tactical variable. Seeing it operate in real-time, enslaving a dozen strangers in under a minute without the sorceress lifting a single finger, was a different, horrifying thing entirely.
"Should we talk here?" Lorelei asked pleasantly, adjusting a diamond bracelet on her wrist. "I can't turn it off, you see. And there's an awful lot of foot traffic on this block."
"Come inside." Selene turned sharply on her heel toward the towering glass facade of the Red Ribbon Group building. She pulled out her encrypted secure-phone as she walked, her thumbs flying across the screen.
All male personnel—offices, rooms, closed doors. Do not come out until further notice.
Fifty floors up, Eddie Brock sat behind his expansive desk. His phone buzzed harshly.
He read the alert. He didn't ask questions. He didn't hesitate. Eddie slammed his hand onto the biometric security terminal, issuing the building-wide Level Two lockdown order inside of thirty seconds.
Outside his office, the corporate machinery of Red Ribbon moved with terrifying precision. Silent alarm strobes flashed blue. Heavy magnetic locks thudded into place. Male employees abandoned their coffee mugs and conversations, stepping quickly into the nearest offices and securing the doors. The Red Ribbon Group paid astronomically well, and Eddie drilled his emergency procedures into them until it was muscle memory. Compliance wasn't an issue. The people who had once questioned the strict, paranoid protocols simply weren't with the company anymore.
Only when the floor monitors showed clear, empty hallways did Eddie text back: What happened?
Selene replied without breaking stride on the ground floor: Tournament contestant. Abilities require male personnel to stay clear. Precautionary.
Eddie read the text, his breath catching slightly in his chest.
Another tournament. Another field of competitors possessing abilities that had absolutely no business existing in the natural world. During the last cycle, he'd had a front-row seat to all of it. He'd stood in the arena with a microphone, watching gods bleed and mountains crack. He had learned things about what people were truly capable of that he still hadn't entirely processed in the quiet hours of the night.
A slick, oily warmth uncoiled at the base of his spine. A mass of black alien muscle shifted under his tailored suit.
Poor Eddie, Venom's voice purred in the hollows of his skull, vibrating with a wet, rumbling, deeply unhelpful cheerfulness. Tickets are going out and nobody called us.
Eddie froze.
He turned the thought over, the cold reality of it sinking into his stomach. The invitations were actively being distributed—he could see it happening in real-time from the building-wide lockdown alone—and no one from the Fraternity had reached out to him about hosting. Not a secure line call, not an encrypted message, not even a passing heads-up.
He pulled up Smith Doyle's contact and hit dial.
It connected fast.
"Eddie."
Smith's tone was perfectly neutral, but it carried that impossible, heavy gravity—the subtle, underlying authority of a man who moved the pieces on a board no one else could see.
"What's on your mind?"
"The new tournament," Eddie said smoothly. He had mapped out exactly how to phrase this in the three seconds it took the line to ring. "Are there preparations I should make for hosting? Anything different from last cycle?"
It was smart framing. Not Am I hosting?—just What do I need to do? He hadn't made any mistakes. He had delivered the Paragons, successfully married Anne, and been handed the reins of the massive Red Ribbon Group. By any reasonable, corporate accounting, he should be walking back into that hidden arena with a microphone in his hand.
Smith let a small, deliberate silence pass over the line.
"I've already chosen a host, Eddie," Smith said quietly. "It won't be you this time." A beat. The finality of the statement locked into place. "You and Anne will have spectator access. Come and watch."
Then, without missing a single breath, Smith pivoted. "How is Killian's case moving?"
Eddie sat with the sharp, acidic sting of disappointment for exactly one second. Then, with practiced efficiency, he filed it away in the dark. Spectator access wasn't being completely sidelined—he was still the CEO of Red Ribbon, still technically inside the circle. Venom had just gotten lucky with a cruel guess.
"Killian's confirmed as a terrorism case," Eddie said, his posture straightening as he focused on the bloodshed at hand. "The sentence is execution. It wasn't clean to arrange—he was taken alive, and there are high-level intelligence interests desperately chasing the Extremis formula. A lot of moving parts. A lot of interference."
"I want him finished," Smith said.
The neutral tone was gone. The words dropped through the phone like lead weights. There was absolutely no ambiguity in it.
"We've had our name attached to every bombing he orchestrated," Smith continued, the coldness in his voice radiating through the speaker. "Innocent people died. The Paragons exist specifically because of what those events cost. If Aldrich Killian walks away with his life intact, what was the point of any of it? No scapegoats. No quiet transfers to black sites. I want the outcome confirmed, not reported."
"Understood," Eddie said. The corporate hesitation vanished. His voice went flat, professional, and deadly. Under his shirt, the symbiote thrummed in violent agreement. "I'll oversee it personally. When it happens, there won't be anything left to find."