Sorry to keep you waiting, but here we are!

Creativity: It's been a loooong time coming!

Author: Relatively speaking, yes.

It's been quite a while since we sat down to write for Resurgence, and we've been rolling! We've currently got four more chapters of Before: KH wrapped up and Limit Breaker has reached eighteen chapters and cross the 100K word threshold!

Creativity: Might not mean that much to those who don't follow all of our work, but we still like to give little status updates.

But here we are, finally sitting down to write the last chapter of set three. Actually, it's been long enough that I needed to reread the previous four chapters to reappraise myself of just what's been going on in this set. But now I'm all caught up and ready to finish this set off!

Now then, as custom on Friday chapters, here's the Discord password: R23A8zG

Creativity: I believe that covers everything, sir… Yep! Nothing left on the docket!

Author: Fantastic! Now then, I now proudly present chapter 15 of Venom: Resurgence!

General Targo knew that the various research programs involving symbiotes, collectively referred to as the Sym program, were terrible ideas from initial conception. And here they were years later, and lo and behold, he was right. According to the scattershot reports he'd received, it seemed that this new Venom had managed to sneak their way into the primary research facility within Safe Haven and had worked their way down into the underground section of the facility where they did their more… questionable research. They'd snuck in with a goal. That much was obvious, given how Venom had immediately gone straight for where the captive outsiders were being held and freed them. Afterwards, it seemed intent on leaving the facility with the captives it had freed, only to be stopped when one of them started questioning one of the facility personnel. After that, Venom had made its way to where they kept test-subjects that had been bonded to various symbiotes, both ones captured from the wild and ones that Dr. Markus had… cloned? Bred? It was screwy either way to the General.

Whatever it was, one of the hosted muck balls had managed to escape when the Hellspitter they'd deployed to deal with the situation got way too over-zealous and ended up breaking two of the holding cells! It managed to terminate one of them before it escaped, but the second one had already high-tailed it out of there. Now there were reports of that one on a rampage of its own through the facility. Strangely enough, it didn't seem to be following a route to freedom, instead attacking the main circuit chamber that handled distribution of power to this wing of the facility, then heading in a North-Western direction.

However, his attention wasn't on that particular rampage. No, his attention was fixed on the one versus three battle occurring in the holding cell vault. The power failure had left all the vaults to open, and the additional safety measures to keep the symbiotes sedated to shut down, leaving them free to escape. They had immediately turned on Venom and were now trying to tear their fellow symbiote limb from limb! Targo had ordered several squads to be on standby for when the fighting settled down and they could go in and clean up whatever was left.

Or at least, that was the plan until he got word from one Dr. Emily Markus who had been in another wing of the facility at the time. General Targo groaned as he tapped on the screen to answer the video call.

"What is it, doctor? As I'm sure you are aware, I'm in the middle of an active crisis." He asked with a frustrated tone of voice, with a hint of snideness.

"And we'll all be in the middle of an even bigger crisis if you don't put all available troops on the escapee that's tearing its way through the facility!" Dr. Markus shouted at him, causing him to pause.

"Can you clarify that last statement?" He asked.

"I projected the pathway that the escapee you've neglected to send proper troops after is taking, and they're heading straight for the SHIELD GENERATOR!"

She all but screamed the last two words, and an icy hush fell over the room. If the generator were to fall, Safe Haven would immediately be under siege from every symbiote in the vicinity, and they were always close by. Not too close, but close enough that they'd be scaling the walls within minutes of the shield dropping. And with the chaos unfolding beneath the city, it was becoming increasingly likely that the shield was going to drop if they didn't get a handle on this situation ASAP.

"Attention all available units, we have a sym loose in the facility and it is possibly targeting the shield generator! I repeat, sym loose in the facility and heading for the shield generator! Stop it by any means necessary!" He announced over the intercom before wiping his brow with a handkerchief he kept on hand.

"I knew this group of programs could only end badly, but I didn't think it'd go this bad this quickly." Targo muttered to himself as he watched the camera feeds. However, as he kept watching, it was becoming abundantly clear that the way they were caught off guard was going to cost them and cost them big. Looking over it all, he frowned and decided to make a judgement call that was sure to be remembered as a stain on his reputation forever but was something that needed to be done. He opened a direct line to the Council.

There were several agonizing moments of waiting before the call finally got through. The moment it did, Targo didn't waste any time.

"I'm sure you are already appraised of the situation, so I'll cut to the chase. I move for a complete evacuation of the facility, including all of the research materials and personnel possible." Targo immediately stated. There was utter silence for a few long moments before one of the council-members responded.

"General Targo, do you realize what you are suggesting? Moving all the equipment and research materials out of research facility Alpha to another site will take hours to complete and the process cannot just stop should this be a false alarm." The council member reminded him in a slightly admonishing tone, which Targo bristled a bit at.

"Councilman, do you honestly believe I would make this call if I was confident in my men's ability to respond to this colossal security breach? As it is, much our security personnel will not make it in time to stop the rogue sym from reaching the shield generator and, if you recall, the council voted to move all dedicated anti-sym weapons into military installations around the city and that they weren't to be deployed unless a proper invasion was upon us. As it is, all soldiers and law-enforcement units are currently armed with our standard firearms, which are about as effective against syms as throwing pebbles, if you'll recall." Targo replied with a faint hint of condescension and frustration in his voice. It was quite clear that, in his mind at least, the council was at least partially accountable for the mess they were in at the moment.

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence before another council member finally took action.

"All in favor of a complete evacuation…" The councilman called. It was quite obvious that it was a majority vote. The General took care to not show it, but he was very relieved.

"The order will be issued. General Targo, you have command of all of Safe Haven's forces, save those involved in the evacuation. Should a full-scale invasion by symbiotes take place, you are to buy time for the evacuation to be completed." The councilman declared, though he sounded rather reluctant. Targo nodded and signed off, waiting for the orders to be issued as he checked the camera feed to see what he'd missed during the impromptu meeting.

Turns out he'd missed some pretty big stuff. The rogue symbiote was getting uncomfortably close to the shield generator and the 3 on 1 brawl against Venom had left the confines of the Vault and moved into the hallways. Also, the number had been whittled down to one on one, though it looked to be more by virtue of the missing two having split off and made a break for freedom. The one Venom was currently fighting was black and dark green in color, its hosted form looking rather skeletal in appearance. Its mouth was an empty black void, framed by teeth that varied between black and dark green. Its eyes were chaotic, even by the standards of symbiotes, and it seemed that transferred over to its fighting style. If it could be called a style, that is. As it was, it looked like it was just mindlessly thrashing about, half the time not even looking at its apparent target.

However, even in the red glow of the emergency lights, it was apparent that Venom was worn out from having fought the Hellspitter and then three crazed syms. Oh, and the squads that had been stationed outside had been killed or knocked unconscious. The blood, stab wounds and missing limbs indicated that some were very much dead, though not all of them. Didn't make it any less of a grisly sight, though.

Still, something told him that this mess was just the start. The council had set itself and the entire city up to fail in their overconfidence, and now it was going to bite everyone in the ass.

Garter grit his teeth as he nimbly leapt and twisted through the hallways of the facility, desperately trying to avoid being gutted like a fish.

"Say, anything useful you could tell me to beat this guy?!" Garter shouted in his head to the symbiote as he ducked under another swung and rushed forward, his hands transforming into spearpoints as he let loose with two vicious stabs. Unfortunately, much like the last time he tried this, the damage didn't seem to stick.

"I'm still working on that! Some of us are better at regeneration than others!" Venom replied hastily as Garter decided to abandon the slashing and stabbing methods in favor of brute force, trying to pummel the attacker into submission.

"Well we need to wrap this up fast! We still need to get the Travelers out of here, assuming they're still alive, and we have no idea where the other two ran off to, so please work a little faster!" Garter yelled back before he delivered a hard right uppercut that lifted the attacker right off its feet and put its head straight through the ceiling. Seeing that it was stuck for the moment, Garter leapt backwards while firing a webline to the walls on either side of the monster before pulling back as far as he could. He could feel the webs straining and hear the wall cracking and groaning. After a moment longer, he unlatched his feet from the floor and sent himself flying forward before flipping to drive his feet straight into the symbiote's ribs! The symbiote was torn free from the ceiling and sent flying backwards, shrieking the whole way. Leaping clear before the symbiote could retaliate, Garter rushed in with a quick two-punch combo before leaping up to deliver a kick with both feet and immediately going into a back spring. Once he was back on two feet, he immediately began webbing up the symbiote before delivering a few more punches to the head for good measure. Thankfully, this appeared to be enough to keep it down, at least for now. After adding a few more layers of webbing to be on the safe side, Garter immediately rushed back to the place where he'd left the Travelers. As shaken and stressed as they looked, they were at least unharmed. They were immediately apprehensive when they saw Garter come around the corner, given the emergency lights' eerie red glow making it harder to make out who it was, but they relaxed a bit once they recognized him. Only a little bit though, considering he was the very thing they'd been raised to fear.

"Alright, what do we do from here again?" Garter asked Venom. Today had been way more exhausting than he believed it had any right to be, but a few more moments of consideration made him decide that his time inside this city had spoiled him a bit, moments of excitement aside.

"Grab one of the scientists and use them to get the elevator moving. After that, we head out and start making hell again until we can get out." Venom answered promptly. Garter immediately reached down and grabbed one of the scientists on the ground, heaving them off the ground and letting Venom guide him to a panel near the elevator. After lifting up the scientist's hand, he pressed it to the panel. There was a droning noise that was immediately followed by a series of beeps. This was immediately followed by another panel opened. Garter then peeled the scientist's eyelid back and holding it up to the panel. After a few more moments of beeping, the elevator door opened. Garter motioned for the Travelers to all pile into the elevator, luckily managing to fit everyone inside, even if it was a bit crowded. After making sure it was heading up to the correct floor, Garter climbed atop the elevator through the access hatch on the ceiling of the elevator.

"Alright, now we're over with the quiet part. Was that the hard part? Because after all the distractions I've kind of forgotten." Garter asked Venom, who went quiet for a few moments.

"As I recall, this next part is the hard part, but I suppose it's ironically less stressful. No need for subtlety." Venom replied. Garter nodded.

"Yeah. That sounds about right. Then we just need to get on one of those vehicles and we can get out of here." Garter huffed. He could feel the elevator slowing down, indicating he needed to get ready for a fight. The moment the elevator came to a stop, Garter crawled into a nearby vent and made his way a distance into the vents before finding an access grate, breaking it open before dropping down and readying himself for a fight. Only, there was a problem.

All of the soldiers, technicians and other staff of the facility were running about in chaos, and Garter had a feeling it wasn't just because of what had happened below ground, nor what he'd done up here to get down there.

As the elevator door opened and the newly freed Travelers streamed out, they witnessed the disorganized scrambling of their former captors and were just as confused by what was happening as Garter. As they watched all of this confusing nonsense unfold however, there was a low, rumbling boom that shook the ground below them. The results were everyone who was running around like spooked insects stumbling about and tripping over themselves, followed by a chilling silence. Then they noticed that Garter was standing in front of them and started running for their damn fool lives.

"This can't be good…" Garter muttered as he quickly began making his way through the facility to the landing pad and began looking around before Venom responded.

"The barrier is dropping…" Venom murmured. Garter's eyes widened.

"Wait, we don't have to worry about the barrier?! Well let's get… Oh… Oh no…" Garter breathed.

A stillness fell over the city as a massive column of smoke began to rise from its center before there was a weak voice on the wind. However, it slowly began to build in crescendo, becoming a screeching battle cry that rolled over the city like a cold, winter's wind. Garter didn't need Venom to tell him what was coming next.

The siege of Safe Haven by the symbiote species had begun.

WELP! SHIT'S HIT THE FAN!

Creativity: Oh MAN, this is not good!

Author: Yeah, that's how we're ending set 3. The beginning of the end for Safe Haven. The primary defense has fallen and now the symbiotes are running like hellhounds towards one of humanity's last refuges against the symbiote hoard. THAT'S how we're ending it here and opening on set 4.

Creativity: Oh, this is gonna be so fun to write…

Author: I know…

Also, quick think to note is that the week this is published is my first week back at college, so time spent writing is going to drop. Consequently, that means less uploads. Just thought I'd let you all know about that.

Alright, I think that covers just about everything! Please review, hope to see you in Discord, have a good day and see you next time!