Disclaimer: Don't own Spiderman or anything else in Marvel. OCs are mine though.

AN: This will follow the Dark Web of Shadows timeline, starting near the end and following the OC(s?) (And maybe some known characters) in their quest to stay as close to human as possible in a symbiote apocalypse.

Ch 1: Crap...

'Crap.' That very well summarized the young adult's -in fact, only eighteen mere days ago- thoughts on his current situation, as he snuck through the shadows of this living nightmare.

Andrew Darwinson was a very average Joe guy, nothing incredibly unique about him. He wasn't a mutant, closet genius, or even the result of a stray experiment gone wrong. The only thing keeping him alive -as it were, when he would otherwise be one of those things- was a state of mind he had seemingly developed through consistent reading and gaming.

He didn't really know what to call it; he only knew that it was helping him deal with all the crap going on around him without flipping the frick out. He was a melancholy hopeful, a person who though they accepted their dull reality and wished for excitement, never truly saw it as something that would ever happen. Even if there were real super heroes out there, he was just someone doomed to the average civilian life. Though this state of mind was one that would allow him to accept literally anything as reality in a world were anything was possible, even if his own life was dull.

He gave a despairing laugh. 'This is so messed up, and there's nothing anyone can do about it.' He clenched his fists and nearly punched the brick wall of the dark ally he currently hid himself in. Only that would have been stupid and would make him cry out in pain, which would bring the monsters running straight to him.

What was he even doing? He looked around to see more of the purple-black sludge that currently infected so much of New York's population, oozing into the ally from the rooftops and gave an annoyed grimace. 'Time to get a move on then,' he thought. Andrew drew a hand through his auburn hair with a tired sigh. The just recently a legal adult had managed to keep uninfected since this whole damn invasion began through a mixture of desperate stealth and no small amount of shoplifting, not that anyone was around to care anymore.

His hazel eyes locked onto a ladder, that branched across several apartment windows and led to the roof. He sighed again, for what felt like the hundredth time that day. He had been travelling elaborately through buildings, never once exposing himself to broad daylight, but when there was absolutely no other way to progress.

He scaled the ladder quickly, no sense in letting it be infected before he could do so, and as silently as possible flicked open a switchblade to pry the second floor window open. He cringed, when there was a piercing, creaking crack. The shrieks of the infected rang in his ears, and he quickly scrambled inside, shutting the window softly behind him and crouching down out of sight.

His heart beat erratically with a quick shot of adrenaline, as inhuman snarls and howls echoed through the ally he had been in just moments before. Andrew didn't move or nearly breath for a whole tense minute and a half, as the symbiotes investigated before finally moving on.

Even when they where finally gone from hearing range, Andrew didn't once let down his guard. He slowly stood and found himself to be in an sparsely decorated, yet rather messy, apartment. The first order of business was to check for more entrances. He'd found that the symbiotes had a natural talent for jump scares. He really couldn't believe he hadn't been infected yet.

There were no other entrances, save the door to the apartment, so the next thing was supplies. The kitchen yielded some peanut-butter crackers and Gatorade. He also found some bananas but didn't feel like lugging them around in his backpack, where they would undoubtedly be bruised, and so proceeded to eat all three he found. Water bottles were a big yes. He didn't trust faucets after the last one spewed symbiotic goo. He took the two bottles there and continued his little raid.

Some bags of beef jerky were a welcome surprise. He hadn't been able to make any proper meat, afraid of the smell attracting those damnable hell-spawn.

Andrew knew very well what the symbiotes were. They were all obviously connected to that Venom alien he had read about. The internet was amazing, truly. It wasn't surprising to him really from what he knew. I mean, how illogical would it be to assume pieces of the living goo could gain their own consciousness and multiply in turn. Hadn't that already happened in the form of Carnage?

He sighed yet again and poured himself some refrigerated milk in a clean, black mug with a polar bear printed on it as he mused. Finishing the drink after a second mug-full and placing the mug down, Andrew stood and stretched, allowing his back a few satisfying pops, before heading back to check on the window. It was already covered in the black goo, and small, shiny, writhing tendrils snaked their way under the frame and into the apartment.

He truly hadn't expected anything less and nodded. It was time to move again. It occurred to him then that the entire complex could be infected as well. This needed to be quick. He shrugged his brown backpack onto his shoulders and checked the laces of his shoes. He patted his blue, denim jeans and smoothed back his auburn, messy, short hair as a nervous habit.

He walked to the apartment door that led into the hallways and ever so gently unlocked it with a 'click'. He cringed and waited for the sounds of movement with his ear pressed against the door. There was none, so he swiftly jerked the door open, ensuring that if it did creak it would be short even if loud in any way. His eyes widened to comical and panicked proportions, as symbiote goo instantly gushed into the room from a flooded hallway.

Andrew stumbled back and reached into his pocket, drawing an mp3 player, even as tendrils lashed about, sensing a potential host. He multitasked, flipping through music to one appropriately called Screech, since it was basically just a very long, high-pitched noise set on a loop that he had downloaded at the start of the invasion to repel symbiotes, and pulled out a set of small presentation speakers from his backpack.

Andrew put in a pair of earplugs, snapped the chord of the speaker into the mp3 player, and cranked both up to full volume before playing a sound fit to rupture even human eardrums in a moment and crack windows. Thank goodness it wasn't aimed at him. All symbiotes within two blocks instantly recoiled in agony, as the damaging noise disrupted their very fluctuous and unstable cell structure.

Even with the ear plugs, Andrew had to clap his hands over his ears or risk permanent damage. The symbiotes screeched and howled helplessly, unheard over the din of the almighty Screech. Andrew waited until the tendrils in the room and hallway had shriveled away into nothing more than quivering puddles of useless, black iccor to turn off the mp3 player.

He sighed in relief and slumped against the wall, a strange bout of vertigo hitting him as a result of the sound. That had been far too close for comfort. He had closed his tired, hazel eyes to run his hands across his face. This, however, caused him to miss a near insignificant spec of goo that crawled forward desperately, reeling mentally and physically from the truly terrifying attack that could actually give a civilian a chance again supers.

A brief moment of mental clarity told the weak symbiote not to target the youthful man, but the weapon. And so it crept onto the mp3 player, lying unguarded, and contracted around it, absorbing and integrating it make and components into its ever shifting genetic structure. The symbiote then threaded its way along the speaker's chord, absorbing as it went and then threading into the speaker, forcibly absorbing that as well.

The symbiote was exhausted to the point of near death now, having had to expend precious energy to ensure no retribution. Even as it inched its way toward Andrew's right though, its thoughts seemed to clear and become even clearer. Somehow, someway, that sound and the subsequent absorption of new materials had freed the pitiable creature from Venom's influence and insanity, granting it true sentience of its own. And now a single goal made itself abundantly clear... Survive. No matter what sacrifices it would have to make for its host.

For surely if it were a true symbiote, then why would it wish to do anything less than work with its host for the betterment of them both instead of enslaving them.

Patience was the true name of the game here. The symbiote did not dare touch Andrew with a single flimsy tiny tentacle till it was but centimeters from his hand. Then the tiny creature threw itself onto his hand in hopeful desperation, quickly spreading out on his hand, sending tendrils into his pores absorbing the nutrients required for it to heal and expand.

Andrew moved with a start, looking in alarm at the surviving symbiote on his hand and the absence of his mp3 player. He hastily tried to brush the creature off, but already, the symbiote had managed to get a secure grip, and he only succeeded in having more of the symbiote latch onto his other hand and begin spreading there too.

Andrew sighed with a tired scowl. "Crap..."

AN: Good? Bad? I've got ideas for this and wanted to make my own entry to the Spiderman category. So yeah R&R! But no flames. Symbiotes hate that. XP