Manhattan was dark and quiet at night. In the dimly lit reference room of NYPD Headquarters, Ethan sat once again in front of the department's outdated terminal, eyes fixed on the flickering screen as he sifted through the sparse leads Rick Frey had left behind.
According to what Ethan had extracted from Frey—right before his messy execution—Frey's orders came from a mid-tier gang boss named Paul Mark. The name had meant nothing at first, but Frey mentioned that Paul Mark was a handler of sorts in the Bloodhead Gang. He coordinated "cleanup jobs"—quiet hits, sabotage, extortion. Frey got picked often because he never asked questions and got things done fast.
Ethan entered the name "Paul Mark" into the department database, tapping the Enter key with just a little more force than needed. The spinning wheel on screen whirred for several seconds before a grainy mugshot loaded, and Ethan's breath hitched.
He recognized the man immediately.
It was him—the heavyset guy who had opened the door when Ethan delivered a late-night pizza to a brownstone in Brooklyn. The same man who took far too long to answer the door, glanced around as if making sure no one was watching, and had over-tipped him for a simple delivery. Ethan had noted the whole interaction because the order hadn't existed in the restaurant system when he double-checked it later. Turned out it had been a clerical error—a mistaken address—but the actual customer had been understanding, and the situation ended with a few free coupons and a shrug.
But now the dots were connecting.
"That delivery… It wasn't a mistake," Ethan muttered, a chill running down his spine. "That's what started it all."
He had always wondered why the hit on his car felt so coordinated. Why it seemed like someone wanted to erase him, specifically. He had done nothing wrong. Until now, he'd assumed it was random, maybe just a wrong-place-wrong-time scenario. But if Paul Mark was involved, and if Ethan had accidentally witnessed something sensitive during that delivery…
"They must've thought I knew something. Something I shouldn't have seen."
Venom stirred inside his mind, picking up on his spiraling thoughts. "It's pointless to dwell on what-ifs, Ethan," the symbiote said, voice deep and gurgling like oil in a vat. "What matters is that we find Paul Mark. Rip the truth out of him."
Ethan nodded, pushing his internal disquiet aside and focusing on the data before him. But disappointment quickly followed. Compared to Rick Frey, Paul Mark's file was skeletal—no home address, only an outdated mugshot from over five years ago, and a handful of vague reports.
It was obvious: Paul Mark had protection. Whether it came from the Bloodhead Gang's internal operations or corrupt NYPD insiders, Ethan couldn't tell. But the lack of intel made one thing painfully clear—Mark was far more connected than Frey ever was.
He switched the search criteria and keyed in a broader query: "Bloodhead Gang."
More disappointment.
Aside from a couple of ancient busts from the late '90s, the Bloodhead Gang barely had a digital footprint in the police database. No active cases. No wiretap logs. Not even a surveillance tag. It was as if the entire operation worked beneath the radar—highly organized, extremely covert.
"They're ghosts," Ethan said, fingers tightening into fists. "No way an operation like this leaves behind nothing unless someone's helping them stay invisible."
Venom scoffed. "These meatbags in uniform are worse than useless. When I was watching Spider-Man operate, I saw how he cleaned up messes these donut-slurping fools wouldn't even notice."
Ethan glanced up, half amused despite himself. "You were spying on Spider-Man?"
"I was learning," Venom replied, voice echoing with dark humor. "He's clever. And the NYPD? Laughably incompetent. Barring a few exceptions, they're mostly desk parasites pretending to be enforcers."
Ethan returned to the screen, eyes narrowing. "We can't rely on this database to find Paul. We need boots-on-the-ground information. Frey mentioned Paul operated out of a club downtown, one of those unlicensed front joints where the Bloodhead Gang launders money."
"Then we visit the club," Venom replied, venomously eager. "And this time, Ethan, let me handle the conversation."
Ethan smirked darkly and pushed away from the terminal. "Not yet. We're not going in loud. Not until we know what we're walking into."
As he powered down the terminal, Ethan glanced one last time at Paul Mark's picture. The image had shifted from ordinary to monstrous in his eyes. It was the face of a man who'd caused countless deaths—including, indirectly, the one Ethan had narrowly escaped from.
"We're coming for you, Paul," he muttered. "You won't see it coming."
Ethan paused for a moment as Venom's voice faded in his mind. A cold glint appeared in his eyes as he muttered, "There must be people in high-ranking government or law enforcement shielding the Bloodhead Gang. This isn't some petty criminal outfit—it's a monstrous syndicate slithering beneath New York's skin."
The database had offered no new leads. The silence was damning.
Venom, frustrated and craving distraction, let out a low, rumbling huff. "Tch. Pointless scrolling. Let's get out of here. I'm hungry," it grumbled, licking its inky black maw in Ethan's mind.
Ethan didn't need to guess what Venom meant by hungry. It still hadn't gotten over not devouring Rick Frey's brain. The scent had lingered—ripe with adrenaline and fear—but Frey's cowardice had tainted the flavor. The symbiote's disgust had been instant when Frey soiled himself at the moment of death.
"A waste of potential flavor," Venom muttered bitterly. "But I suppose we can compensate. I want chocolate. The kind with hazelnuts. A whole box."
Ethan sighed and closed the terminal, disappointment twisting in his chest. "We came hoping for answers. All we got was another dead end."
He stood and stretched his fingers, then added, "Let's do what we did with Frey. I'll input Paul Mark's face and biometric profile into our program back home. Run it through traffic cams, city feeds, whatever we can hook into. There's no way he can hide forever—not if he's still in New York."
"And he will be," Venom replied confidently. "They planned that hit to eliminate you. And you're still breathing. Still walking. Still hunting. They'll want to finish what they started."
Ethan began resetting the room to how it had been before he'd snuck in. He wiped the keyboard, turned off the terminal, re-locked the drawers, and quietly exited through the third-story window, vanishing into the shadow-soaked skyline of lower Manhattan.
Deploying the program meant waiting. Unlike with Frey—whose location had practically dropped into their lap—finding Paul Mark might take days, even weeks. There were no guarantees now, just a web of digital leads and facial match algorithms that crawled the underbelly of the city's surveillance network. It was a long shot. But long shots were all Ethan had left.
Still, luck had favored them once. Perhaps it would again.
While Ethan glided through the night toward his apartment, several miles away, the lifeless basement where Rick Frey had met his end remained untouched. Blood had pooled thick and dark beneath the body. Then, suddenly, a shrill, persistent ringtone echoed in the tight space—the sound of a cheap burner phone buried in Frey's front pocket.
The phone rang three times. No answer.
Blood had soaked through the fabric of his pants, seeping into the speaker grille, dulling the ringtone into a wet, buzzing whimper. On the fourth ring, the caller finally gave up, the line going dead mid-chime.
And just like that, the basement returned to silence.
There, on the outskirts of the city—forgotten, empty, and far from any patrolling officer—Rick Frey's corpse lay undisturbed. There was no one to report him missing. No friends. No family. No curious neighbors.
Ethan and Venom had erased their presence thoroughly—no prints, no DNA, nothing but a headless body and smears of congealed red. They'd made a clean getaway.
But they hadn't bothered to clean up everything.
They'd left the corpse.
They'd left the blood.
They'd left the flies.
Rick Frey, the coward who begged for his life before his neck snapped, would rot in that basement. His flesh would be consumed by maggots, his remains forgotten by the world—nothing more than a decaying warning.
Justice, in its most primal form.