Morning sunlight couldn't reach the bunker, but Veyric's internal clock dragged him awake on schedule anyway.
He opened his eyes to find Venom curled into a ball on his chest, dead asleep and snoring softly.
Can I return this thing? It's like owning a dog...
He sighed, left the symbiote where it was, and swung his legs off the bed.
The main hall was the same wash of amber half-light. Peter was already at the central console, busy with something.
"Morning, Veyric." He didn't look up. "Found some useful stuff in the main system."
Veyric walked over. Peter was rummaging through a set of drawers built into the console's base.
"Check it out. Backup access cards for the base." He held up several black magnetic keycards. "I dug through the system logs and found out there's a second entrance besides that photo booth. A standard elevator, disguised as an abandoned electrical junction box on the surface."
"You're telling me we don't have to ride the death slide every time?"
"Exactly." Peter grinned. "First entry requires key verification, but after that it's just a card swipe. And..." He tapped through a few screens on the console, pulling up a permissions interface. "I registered your biometrics in the system. Full clearance. You can come and go as you please and use every unlocked facility."
Veyric smiled. "Thanks, Peter."
"Don't mention it. You're the key to fixing this whole mess." Peter clapped his shoulder. "Ready? Time to hit Stark Tower."
Veyric nodded, ducked back into the food storage room, and stuffed a fistful of chocolate bars into a backpack.
"Venom, get up!"
The dark mass on his chest squirmed.
"Five more minutes..."
"No time. I made you breakfast."
He unwrapped a Dove chocolate and popped it into his mouth. Venom snapped to attention instantly.
"Chocolate!"
The symbiote surged out of him, swallowed the piece whole, and let out a satisfied belch.
"More! I need to recharge my combat power!"
Veyric fed it a few dozen more pieces. Venom's condition improved visibly, its body noticeably fuller than the night before.
"How are you feeling?"
"Almost there!" Venom flexed its tendrils. "I could take on ten guys right now!"
"Good enough."
They left through Peter's newly discovered elevator exit. A metal door disguised as a derelict junction box swung open with a card swipe, revealing a compact elevator that rose straight to ground level.
"Much more civilized than the photo booth," Veyric muttered with relief.
They stepped out into New York's ruins.
Morning light spilled across shattered pavement. A faint smell of rot hung in the air. Somewhere in the distance, the low moan of the undead drifted over the rooftops, but this industrial stretch was quiet.
Peter fired a web line. Veyric climbed onto his back, and they launched toward Stark Tower.
Along the way, Veyric kept pulling chocolate from the backpack and feeding it to Venom.
"Mmm... this brand's pretty good too..."
"Quit snacking. I'm counting on you to keep me alive in there."
"Relax, Veyric! Nobody's laying a finger on you while I'm around!" Venom thumped its chest in solemn guarantee, then bit into another chocolate.
Twenty minutes later, Stark Tower rose into view.
The skyscraper that once stood as a monument to everything the Avengers represented was a ruin. Half the giant "STARK" lettering had fallen away. Most of the glass curtain wall was gone, and several floors had collapsed entirely, exposing jagged cross-sections of rebar and concrete like broken bones.
The plaza below was littered with abandoned armored vehicles, helicopter wreckage, and wide dark stains where blood had long since dried.
"What a disaster," Veyric said quietly.
Peter landed on the roof of a building across the street. They lay flat at the edge, studying the tower.
"No sign of zombie activity." Peter squinted. "But we can't get careless. Could be an ambush waiting inside."
"And those..." Veyric pointed at the dark surveillance cameras dotting the exterior walls. "They look like they're still active."
Peter frowned. "Residual J.A.R.V.I.S. systems? Mr. Stark should've shut down all AI before he left..."
"Maybe a backup kicked in automatically," Veyric said. "Either way, your webs can blind them."
"Not a bad idea."
They circled to the side of the building and slipped in.
The interior was devastation.
The polished marble lobby was a web of cracks. Artwork that once lined the walls lay in shattered heaps. The reception desk had been flipped onto its back. Elevator doors hung at crooked angles, half-open and dark.
"Underground storage is on sub-level three." Peter dropped his voice. "We take the stairs."
They crept into the emergency stairwell.
The whole way down, Veyric could see the red indicator lights on the wall-mounted cameras. Little eyes, tracking them.
Peter's aim was surgical. Every camera they passed got a precise glob of webbing plastered over its lens.
At last, sub-level three.
They pushed through the door into a broad corridor. Heavy metal doors lined both sides, each one leading to a different storage vault.
"Energy storage is at the far end." Peter took point. "Mr. Stark brought me down here once."
At the end of the hall, a reinforced metal door bore a lightning bolt emblem. Below it, stenciled letters read: HIGH-ENERGY STORAGE / UNAUTHORIZED PERSONNEL PROHIBITED.
Peter swiped a card at the access panel. Red light. Access denied.
No surprise there.
"Brute force it is."
He jammed his fingers into the gap between the doors, lashed webbing around the handles for grip, and pulled.
The metal screamed. The frame buckled and warped under the pressure.
Veyric watched from a few steps back, jaw slack.
He knew Spider-Man's strength was absurd on paper. Roughly ten tons of lifting capacity, which put him in the same conversation as the Hulk. But seeing it in person, watching reinforced steel fold like tinfoil, was something else entirely.
CRACK.
The lock snapped. The door wrenched open.
And in the same instant...
WOOOO... WOOOO... WOOOO...
A piercing alarm tore through the underground level. Red warning strobes erupted along the corridor, painting everything in flashing red.
"No!" Peter's face went tight.
"There's nobody in the building... right?" Veyric asked, not sounding convinced.
"I don't know. But we need to move fast!"