October 31, 2012. Halloween.
The citizens of New York City had expected a night of cheap costumes and candy. Instead, they watched the sky catch fire.
Just off the western coastline, a massive S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier violently materialized out of thin air, dropping out of a localized portal. Its massive repulsor turbines were already screaming, wreathed in thick black smoke. Seconds later, the ship's core detonated. A blinding sphere of orange plasma ripped the carrier to shreds in mid-air.
Yet, oddly, the flaming wreckage didn't rain down across the city. Shimmering, kaleidoscopic shards of a mirror-dimension gateway snapped open, swallowing the bulk of the shrapnel and redirecting the debris straight down onto the abandoned, already-scorched Hudson River docks.
The rubble crashed to the earth, igniting a roaring inferno.
From the center of the raging firestorm, Knull walked out completely unharmed.
The King in Black stepped over a twisted, melting steel beam. The intense, thousand-degree heat radiating from the burning aviation fuel licked at his pale skin, but it didn't burn him. It was, however, creating a severely hostile environment for the living abyss currently coating his armor.
"A clever trick from the human mage," Knull murmured, his voice grinding like ancient stone.
Stephen Strange had acted with infuriating precision. In the fraction of a second before the Helicarrier plummeted, the Sorcerer Supreme had blanketed the vessel in teleportation portals. He had successfully extracted the unconscious Human Torch, the S.H.I.E.L.D. crew, and the Avengers, banishing them to a sanctuary completely hidden from Knull's cosmic perception. The ship's commander had simultaneously triggered the scuttling sequence to buy them time.
It was a desperate, tactical sacrifice. And it meant nothing.
Knull raised his withered, pale hand. He closed his void-like eyes, reaching out into the invisible, cosmic tether of the hive-mind.
He felt the localized resonance of a Codex.
The yellow, purple, and green traitors had died too quickly. They hadn't bonded with their hosts long enough to forge a permanent genetic imprint. They were gone. But the gray one had survived just long enough.
"Rise again, my child," Knull commanded.
Deep within the burning rubble, a puddle of silver-gray sludge violently bubbled. The biomass pulled itself together, rising from the ash and expanding upward with a sickening, wet shriek. It hardened, taking the hulking, muscular humanoid shape of Riot.
The gray symbiote looked down at its own hands, visibly shocked by its own resurrection. Then, Riot turned, its milky white eyes locking onto the King in Black. Riot instantly dropped to one knee, bowing its heavy head in absolute submission.
"There is no need to cower," Knull said, stepping past the kneeling monster. "I cannot currently sense the specific host that destroy you. But rest assured, he will not hide from me for long."
Knull raised both of his arms. The shadows around the docks violently lengthened. The living abyss poured out of his armor, rushing like a tidal wave over the burning wreckage of the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier. The intense heat boiled the outer layers of the sludge, but Knull simply pushed more mass into the fire. The alien sludge crushed the burning steel, twisting and molding the carrier's remains into a towering, jagged, pitch-black throne.
Knull sat upon the dark dais, resting his chin on his pale fist.
Behind the throne, a colossal, heavily mutated black monster stepped out of the shadows. The corrupted Hulk let out a low, rumbling growl, its massive, serpentine tongue rolling over jagged teeth.
Knull raised a finger, halting the beast. "The ambient temperature of these fires is still too high. If you step into the inferno, your new skin will boil."
Knull turned his gaze down to Riot. The gray symbiote, forged in older, denser biomass, could withstand the heat long enough to escape the perimeter.
"I sifted through the memories locked within your Codex," Knull instructed, his eyes narrowing as he looked toward the glittering skyline of Manhattan. A massive, transparent dome of golden magical energy currently encapsulated the entire island, humming with ancient power.
"Find the enhanced beings of this world," Knull ordered. "Hunt the heroes. Once I infect them and harvest their unique genetic codes, I will no longer need my traitorous offspring. I will forge a perfect, specialized army right here on this miserable rock. And while you hunt... find the anchor to this golden barrier. I wish to break it."
"As you command, my Lord," Riot hissed, melting seamlessly into the shadows.
Total panic gripped the streets of Manhattan.
S.H.I.E.L.D.'s emergency evacuation protocols were in full effect. On the major suspension bridges connecting the island to the mainland, dozens of Kamar-Taj apprentices stood in a line, holding open massive, sparking golden portals to funnel civilians into upstate triage centers.
But nobody crossed a bridge or stepped through a portal without bleeding first.
NYPD officers, exhausted and running on pure adrenaline, manned heavy barricades. They systematically pricked the fingers of every single evacuee, running rapid-response sonic blood tests to ensure no symbiote parasites smuggled themselves out of the quarantine zone.
Inside the chaotic bullpen of the Daily Bugle, J. Jonah Jameson stood behind his massive oak desk, aggressively chewing on an unlit cigar.
A heavily armed NYPD tactical squad leader stood in his doorway. "Mr. Jameson, you need to evacuate immediately! The airspace is locked, and the bridges are closing. We have a confirmed, large-scale extraterrestrial biological invasion. You have to leave!"
"Leave?!" Jameson barked, slamming his fist down on his desk so hard his coffee mug rattled. "Are you out of your mind, Officer?"
"Sir, Fox News, CNN, the Times—they've all evacuated their headquarters! The entire media apparatus has already crossed the river!"
Jameson ripped the cigar from his mouth, his mustache bristling. "Cowards! Every single one of them! If the entire press corps runs with their tails tucked between their legs, who is going to tell the people of this city what is happening to their homes?!"
Jameson marched around his desk, poking a thick finger directly into the tactical officer's tactical vest.
"I am staying! The Daily Bugle is staying! And every single terrified citizen trapped on this island is going to know that J. Jonah Jameson didn't run away until we wipe these alien freaks off our streets!"
Out in the dark, narrow alleyways of the city, Riot was working.
The gray symbiote slithered across the brickwork, avoiding the flashing red and blue lights of the police cruisers. It didn't engage Spider-Man. It didn't hunt Venom. It simply moved through the residential blocks, dropping thick, writhing clumps of black biomass onto the fire escapes of apartment buildings.
The sludge seeped through cracked windows, sliding into the bedrooms of civilians who hadn't evacuated in time. The moment the biomass touched human skin, it violently expanded, forcing itself down their throats.
These weren't independent symbiotes. They lacked the cognitive ability to amplify human emotions or form distinct personalities. They were pure, unadulterated extensions of Knull's will—mindless, feral killing machines.
Sitting upon his dark throne at the docks, Knull felt the localized hive-mind slowly expanding. Ten drones. Fifty. A hundred.
It was a slow process, but Knull felt no urgency. He didn't care about the fragile, ordinary humans. They were mere cannon fodder, easily dispatched by the humans' crude sonic weaponry. Knull was waiting for the true prizes to emerge from the woodwork. He wanted the super-soldiers. The mutants. The vigilantes.
Where are they? Knull wondered, his pale fingers drumming against the armrest of his throne. With my army spilling into their streets, why do the heroes hide?
Deep beneath the bedrock of Manhattan, inside the maximum-security sub-level prison of Avengers Tower, the red emergency strobes were flashing.
Otto Octavius lay flat on his back inside his transparent, plasteel cell. He couldn't move his arms or legs. But his brilliant mind was calculating the rhythmic pattern of the alarm klaxons.
"Sentry," Otto croaked, his voice raw.
A blocky, heavy-duty drone marched over to the glass, its red ocular sensors glowing in the dim light.
"Why is the facility on high alert?" Otto asked.
"ANOMALY DETECTED IN SECTOR FOUR," the unit replied, its synthesized voice echoing in the corridor. "PLEASE REMAIN CALM. THE AVENGERS ARE CURRENTLY HANDLING THE SITUATION."
Otto stared at the machine. He knew for an absolute fact that the Avengers were not handling it. Spider-Man had explicitly told him the Avengers were thousands of miles away.
A cold, terrifying realization washed over Otto. S.H.I.E.L.D. had lost control. The invasion had begun.
A slow, chilling smile stretched across Otto's face. He didn't have his titanium tentacles. He didn't have the yellow symbiote. He was a quadriplegic locked in a box.
But his vocal cords were no longer human.
When the mechanical harness had fused to his spine, Otto had surgically integrated a cybernetic vocal modulator into his throat to compensate for his failing lungs.
Otto opened his mouth. He didn't speak a word. Instead, he forced the cybernetic implant in his throat to emit a highly specific, rapidly fluctuating binary audio frequency. It sounded like a bizarre, screeching dial-up modem mixed with a high-pitched dog whistle.
The Ultron drone instantly froze. Its red optical sensors violently flickered, turning a sickly, glitching yellow. The machine's head twitched.
Otto continued to broadcast the melodic, overriding command code directly into the drone's audio receptors.
The Ultron sentry slowly raised its heavy, metallic hand. It keyed its own administrative override code into the cell's biometric lock.
The heavy plasteel door hissed open.
Otto Octavius smiled. His electronic vocal cords were capable of far more than just speaking.