Appearing in 1st story
Featured Characters:
- Sleeper / Venom (Eddie Brock) (Loses the Sleeper Symbiote and bonds with the Venom Symbiote)
Supporting Characters:
- Warbride M'lanz
- Sleeper Symbiote (Name revealed)
- Venom Symbiote
Antagonists:
- Tel-Kar (Loses the Venom Symbiote)
Other Characters:
- Rolling Stones (Mentioned) (Topical Reference)
- The Kinks (Topical Reference)
- Dr. Steve (Referenced)
- Numerous unnamed Skrull Empire soldiers
- Kree Empire
Races and Species:
Locations:
- Milky Way Galaxy
- Orion
- D'karr Nebula / Messier 78
- Unidentified Dark Throne military installation
- D'karr Nebula / Messier 78
- Earth, Solar System (Referenced)
- Orion
- Hell (Invoked)
- Andromeda Galaxy (Mentioned)
- Astral Plane
Items:
- Unidentified plague
Vehicles:
- M'lanz's stealth ship
- Striker-Ship N'tauri (Mentioned) (Destroyed)
- Nenora-Class Destroyers (First appearance) (Unnamed)
Events:
- Kree/Skrull War (Mentioned)
Synopsis for 1st story
As M'lanz's ship flies through space, Eddie Brock asks if she has any music. Responding that she only has traditional Skrull war-chants and Bellmouth Leviathan vocalizations, she expresses bemusement at the oddities of human music before inquiring what his new symbiote - dubbed Sleeper - is capable of. As the Sleeper symbiote critques Eddie's taste in music - remarking it prefers the Kinks - Eddie notes its voice is shriller than the Venom symbiote's. The Sleeper symbiote corrects him, stating that it's confident and bragging that it's gifted due to being nurtured by its parent and cared for by a genius with great taste in music. Eddie asks what they're capable of together, M'lanz expressing surprise as he suddenly vanishes. Sleeper appears behind her, noting that his symbiote is even better at camouflaging than Venom, secreting a pheromone that makes it almost impossible to detect. As M'lanz wonders how it could affect her given her physiology is completely different to the humans it was raised among, the Sleeper symbiote - offended - tells Eddie it has been absorbing her respirations and perspirations for hours. Speaking out loud, Eddie tells it to back off as it angrily interprets M'lanz's question as a challenge. M'lanz suddenly collapses, Eddie demanding to know what the Sleeper symbiote did to her. It informs him it simply knocked her out, the ship arriving at the Dark Throne military installation and preparing to dock. As the installation's AI announces that a security team will be arriving, the Sleeper symbiote prepares to release a pheromone to awaken her; Eddie telling it to stop as he peers out the entry hatch.
Later, M'lanz awakens to find Sleeper has gone, barricading the hatch with debris. Speaking to her from inside the military installation, Sleeper explains that she's safer inside the ship: Tel-Kar has released the bioweapon. Horrified, M'lanz tells Eddie that they need to leave and intercept him before he arrives in Skrull space, but Sleeper states he can sense the Venom symbiote is still there - either having been abandoned by Tel-Kar or still bonded to him - and they're not leaving without it. Speaking over the PA system, Tel-Kar greets Eddie and mockingly disparages M'lanz, asking how they found him when she wasn't supposed to know about the base. Stating the facility was created to develop bioweapons, Tel-Kar activates the decontamination system and fills the corridor Sleeper is in with flames. Entering the room as the inferno dies down, Tel-Kar notes there aren't any bodies, but that the incinerator shouldn't have burned hot enough to completely incinerate them. Emerging from invisibility, Sleeper punches Tel-Kar to the ground, the renegade Kree soldier realizing Eddie has bonded to the infant symbiote. Sleeper turns invisible, but Tel-Kar uses the Venom symbiote to interface with the station's sensors; sneering that Eddie is a blundering amateur for letting the symbiote influence him and that it's nothing but a tool. An incinerator sets Sleeper ablaze and he collapses to the ground, Tel-Kar gloating tells Eddie that the Skrull troops destroyed his ship and he released the bioweapon overeagerly, but now he can take M'lanz's ship and use it to wipe out the Skrull Empire.
As Tel-Kar forms a sword and prepares to kill Eddie, the Sleeper symbiote grabs his ankle and interfaces with its parent, urging Venom to fight against Tel-Kar's control. Enraged by the prospect of Eddie and its offspring dying, the Venom symbiote breaks free from Tel-Kar's control, but he pulls out an energy pistol. Before he can open fire, M'lanz - clad in a high-tech hazmat suit - blasts him with her halberd. Tel-Kar disarms her and uses the halberd to sear the Venom symbiote off himself, seemingly killing it. Tel-Kar mockingly tells M'lanz that the suit slows her reflexes and prevents her from using her natural shape-shifting abilities, snapping her glaive in half and then puncturing her suit to expose her to the bioweapon. The Sleeper symbiote quickly separates from Eddie to plug the hole, leaving Eddie defenseless as Tel-Kar prepares to stab him - sneering that Eddie never deserved the symbiote and that at least they'll die together. The Venom symbiote revives and bonds to Eddie, grabbing Tel-Kar and snarling that they're not dead yet. Tel-Kar punches Venom in the face, but M'lanz intervenes and tells Tel-Kar that he's lost everything - his symbiote, his mind, and the war - and has nothing left to fight for. Venom interrupts her telling him to surrender, declaring his intent to eat Tel-Kar's brains as payback; but Tel-Kar refuses and says that even if they could kill him it wouldn't matter: as a loyal soldier to the Kree Empire, the first thing he did upon gaining control of the station was to signal them. As numerous Kree ships arrive at the station, Tel-Kar gloats that M'lanz is right that the Kree-Skrull War is over, but she's wrong about which side won.
Solicit Synopsis
• Eddie Brock and the Venom symbiote have been SEPARATED, but Brock isn’t giving up without a fight!
• With a pair of unlikely allies, Brock takes the fight to his symbiote’s home turf… outer space!