Prologue Part I - An Anonymous Tip
A Random Friday in March, San Francisco
Hey now, Ve, to be fair-.
Eddie.
We don't know that this ISN'T important to the J&G stor-
EDDIE. We are NOT going to Oregon. We do NOT like planes! Or the Cold! We are not being paid enough food for that kind of work! The symbiote's voice almost squeaked as his tone raised in Eddie's head.
They had been at this argument for quite a while now. Quite frankly it had actually been a few hours of the back and forth between the two combatants. In one corner, Eddie Brock; former and not also not technically former well known journalist who is this close to cracking a case wide open. In the other corner, Venom; a symbiotic alien from an outer space comet who does not want to crack this case wide open on account of it may require planes. Which sucks for both of them. It's a tough call as to who will win this battle of arguments.
Eddie is on their combined second back of frozen tater tots, - the good kind, not the waffle kind - hand already halfway to his mouth when the inky, ever shifting face of Venom manifests to cut Eddie out of his daze. Pale white teeth and milky eyes face the human other before Venom's deep, rumbling voice fills the space of their crowded apartment. The visage probably could have made anyone drop dead out of fear alone, but to Eddie, it was comforting. Even more so when the tendrilled mass leans in close to him.
"Eddie. We can drive us. But. No. Planes. They hurt us both." The usual excitable, loud tone of Venom's voice is gone. Instead it is replaced by a softness unlike any physical amenity could offer, and it nearly makes Eddie limp. His shoulders drop, Eddie knows that planes are an awful experience for them both but it's so much cheaper and honestly safer and faster. But gas is expensive enough as it is and while they might be pulling more miles than a car, driving from San Francisco to a town in Oregon literally called 'Halfway' was not in their budget. Not to mention the fact that it's 12 hours on top of driving through mountains without a town in sight for hours. It sucks either way.
Venom knows this is important to him, to Eddie. There's been a series of linking factors to moderately shady 'generic business' firm J&G Corporations. From what the pair has gathered, it might be a front for something terrible and if that is the case? They are going to need as much evidence as they can get from as many sources as possible. Hell, this might even be an 'Avengers' level issue. As much as Eddie has a distaste for the so called 'Superhero Superstars' of their time. This was out of both his and Venom's league to just crack down on their own. They could expose it sure, but after that? What could they do by themselves if this did turn out to be a national secret ring of something? That's right, not a whole damn lot.
Eddie sighs, this really all would have been so much easier to just send it in as is if it weren't for that message that had been sent to their apartment that week.
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The Previous Sunday Evening
Things were going alright. Eddie was working on gathering together the information they got from a few previous interviews, and Venom was watching his favorite real estate show on the TV. There wasn't a whole lot to go on for this J&G Corporation gig, but there was definitely something fishy about them. Something that neither of them could just place anywhere on a certain timeline. There was, and as Eddie always enjoyed saying, 'a hunch'.
It had been something they'd actually initially been given a tip on by an... old friend, from New York. And while the guy may have been blind, Eddie knew better than to take anything he said for granted. So Eddie had immediately looked into the corporation, finding your typical shady corporation things; treating workers poorly, useless HR department, tiny paychecks for everyone but the boss. The usual right? But then there were disappearances. Their employees wouldn't disappear from work, but employees who had worked there usually would have quit, then just vanished. Not even just vanished, they just didn't exist anymore. It seemed like they just weren't even residents of California any more even.
So it was bizarre and shady, and Venom sure as hell didn't like the feeling of one of their visits to a satellite building in San Francisco. But without anything more than the hunch they had, there wasn't much they could post online without immediately being shot down for it. Maybe even literally.
"We would eat the bullets." Eddie chuckles from Venom's snarky comment at the couch.
And then there was a knock at the door. The start of every good horror movie.
Well. Maybe for whoever was on the other side of the door. Here's to hoping they aren't some idiot about to get into a big mess with an alien symbiote and it's host. Venom immediately retracts, rippling ink under Eddie's skin as the human quietly rushes to the door. Looking through the peephole provides nothing. Ve?. There's a brief pause, before an answer rumbles through Eddie's head. There is no one.. It's only at Venom's all clear that Eddie very carefully creaks open the door, peering out down the hallway only to see nothing, both ways. He decides to push the door open a little further, and there's a distinct clacking sound against the other side of the wood. For a moment he panics, but when Eddie looks around to the other side. Taped to a string with a note and wrapped around his door handle is a small recorder. Just like the kind that he uses in his own work. The kind that would survive a car crash. This is gonna be interesting.
He takes the recorder and the note, which only reads 'I hope this helps. I am sorry you didn't get anything out of the interview at J&G., which probably means that whoever just delivered this is either about to lie hard or happens to be a lone employee who saw him that day, and figured they could help each other. Eddie shuts the door, tossing the note onto the counter as Venom takes mental notes for them on the handwriting. Then he goes to his little computer set up, sits down, and presses play on whatever sort of recording this is gonna be. It might not even be anything useful, but you really can never know in situations like this.
There's crackling on the recorder, and then;
"Hello? Oh.. why are you saying hello, this thing isn't recording.. oh wait.. it is. Okay.. okay good. I'm... I'm not going to say my name, but if you're hearing this then you must be Eddie Brock. Which is good, and if it's not then that means we're both already dead. Which I really hope isn't the case..."
There's a longer pause, and it sounds like this whoever is recording is shuffling through papers, before the recorder clears their throat and continues. It sounds young, ish. Probably twenties at least, and vaguely feminine.
"Okay. I know, that you are looking into J&G Corporations. I saw you, when you came in for the interview. I'm honestly surprised you got it at all, but you need to know about what's going on here. Honestly I don't know much either, but I do know that it's shady. Some really shady things are going on here. I don't know what exactly, but it doesn't sound good. It's really illegal kind of not good. Not just your standard high collar crime like laundering or.. or something. I mean like I think these people are smuggling things. I don't know if it's just this branch, or what. But they mentioned a town, I looked it up and it's in Oregon. It's called Halfway. Real small, but it's on the map. Out in the middle of nowhere. They've mentioned it a few times but I don't know what it means. I think whatever it is they're doing illegal, some part of it has got to be in Halfway. That's all I know, I know, which isn't a lot to go off of. But I think... I think you should check it out. It's got to be something right? You're better off going to the police than I am. They might believe you if you have all the evidence.
The recording stops there, alongside some muttering of 'gotta burn these scripts now' that almost makes Eddie laugh if it weren't for the content before it. So, it was a little more than a hunch at least. Right? Had to be. If someone had to specifically seek him out to give them that information. Eddie glances over to Venom, who had emerged out of his shoulder as the recording went on. This was going to make things a lot more confusing.