Monster

Chapter 8: We are lucky

Cole continues their trek from the kitchen towards the basement of the manor although they did take a few detours of exploration to familiarize themselves more with their new supposed home.

"What is it?" Venom asks.

"An old, dilapidated painting." Cole replies as they stood in front of the artwork, "Not bad."

"No, not that. Something's on your mind." Venom states, "What is it?"

"It's just..." Cole said with a sigh and an eye roll, "It's just that girl. Jane or Hammerhead or whoever she is now."

"What about her?" Venom asks.

"I feel bad." Cole said with a shrug, "Sure she was acting like a total bitch, but knowing what we are now...I didn't want to hurt her."

"We didn't hurt her." Venom states.

"Choke slamming a person onto a counter doesn't count as hurting them?" Cole asks.

"We defended ourselves in the least violent way we could. A lot worse could have happened." Venom told her, "You and I both know that."

"Yeah, you could've eaten her for one." Cole points out.

Venom went silent at her statement as if their conversation had come to a pause, "...Can I?"

"No!" Cole said sternly as they continued their path to search for the basement entrance.

They had eventually found said entrance after the boredom of their little exploration had set it. Using Niles' scent as a guide, Cole traversed the manor and found a door that led down a dark room that barely had illumination and was accompanied by the sounds of metal clanging against tools and razors whirring.

Undeterred by the odd sounds, they traveled down the stairs and entered Niles' lab/workshop. They spotted him tinkering on surprisingly a fully robotic body and he had yet to have taken notice of their presence.

"Strange, disabled, genius scientist tinkers on a robot body in a dark laboratory. Quite a headline." Cole states, announcing their presence to Niles who stopped his tinkering and smiled at her, "Not like this place could get any weirder."

"Hello to you too, Cole." Niles greets kindly.

"Yeah, hey-" Cole was about to say, but Venom cut her off.

"Cole, look!" Venom exclaimed.

"What?" Cole asked confusedly.

A black tendril shot out from her chest and latched on to an incubator next to Niles. They were dragged by the tendril and Cole slammed face first onto the glass incubator, groaning in annoyance and widening their eyes at what was inside.

"Brains..." Venom said and Cole could just feel him drooling in desire.

"Fascinating. So that is just a glimpse of what you can truly do, yes?" Niles asks in interest at the tendril that had now disappeared.

"Forget that!" Cole said, pulling back and eyeing the brain, "Is that an actual real-life, human brain in there?"

"Why, yes. I'm currently keeping it in a safe state for the time being in hopes of saving the owner's life with my current project." Niles explains, gesturing to the robot body.

"Can we eat it?" Cole and Venom's voices mixed together as they asked.

"I would prefer if you refrained from doing so." Niles tells them with a chuckle, but they could tell he was serious about the notion.

"Told you he would say no." Cole said and they rolled her eyes at Venom's annoyed growl much to Niles' confused amusement.

They opted to ignore the brain to avoid hungering Venom even more and scanned over the robotic body currently in construction.