VENOM ( moon knight.. ) ✔

003 | Crazy and Craziest..

"... and tell me, darling, I'm the only one that you love..."

Years ago, in Coahuila, an unidentified object hit near an unimportant road, raising tensions with the Texas border, too close by according to American views, and building a mystery for those men and women on duty to figure out what happened. The Breaking News in Mexico were quick to get their headlines out, but no reporters were allowed to come close to the crash site, where flames burned tall and columns of smoke raised amongst police vehicles shining red and blue through the blur.

The pollution left behind immediately gave away that this was man-made at its core.

Five police vehicles meant a little over a dozen people walked around with lanterns, identifying deformed bodies through the wreckage on the brink of collapse. They identified corpses, but no people whatsoever because if the body was not torched in its entirety, then the faces of the crash victims were shredded by what looked like razors.

Miles away, one more car was about to add onto the scenery.

Its all-black paint job got painted with auburn hues, stronger the closest it got to the site. Whoever was driving past those shaded windows cared very little about speed limits and about the police blockade. They parked way past it, closest to the danger zone and off the road.

Dr. Hayes stepped out of the car. The same old scar delving into his skin cast a grim shadow on half his face, letting none of the red tones linger from the fire as they did on the other side. His eyes haven't slept in what looked like decades, but his body was cloaked in fine clothes, in fabrics which wrapped around his tender skin in soft cotton and a heavy, warm coat.

It was obvious he was not from around here, yet one sniff from the polluted air had Hayes turn his head around and point the four people he was with towards the bicycle. Out of those four in his entourage, three were soldiers whose heads were covered in helmets of pitch black. They carried guns proudly. The fourth was a shorter man, about Hayes' age, yet crippled to walk with a banally plain cane. Dark hair, a shivering jaw.

"Looks like a witness, doesn't it, Moritz?" Dr. Hayes hummed.

Moritz pondered, hearing the edge of the song and seeing the forgotten cassette somewhere near that bicycle. Blood stained the ground between the two items.

"Hey," the man in charge of the investigation happening around the crash site called and approached the car with the strange people who missed all the warning signs to stay away. "You can't be here!"

"Of course we can," Dr. Hayes smiled and the cop stopped. The latter had just seen the weapons carried by three of these people, flinching a hand to his own tiny gun when Hayes reached into his coat and brought out a piece of paper. "We are taking over the investigation. Tell your men to go home. I am sure it's been a long night for them."

They had the jurisdiction. With followers in high places, they could hijack just about any place without breaking the law.

"So many died...," Moritz sighed, passing the dead bodies previously pulled outside of the shipwreck and covered in white cloths quickly turning gray from the dust. Dr. Hayes spared no more than a hum to his friend while leading them inside the damaged rocket. He knew exactly where to look and exactly what to expect to see in a best-case-scenario. Both of them did, which made it ever the easier for their eyes to express loud reactions when they were faced with broken containers and burnt marks on the ground.

Moritz's eyes widened. Hayes' narrowed.

"They're gone," Dr. Hayes gritted his teeth before kicking his left foot in one of the broken glass cases. "Dead," the declaration was the closest he ever got to admitting defeat. "All the money we've spent and the samples were all destroyed."