From the moment of rocket ignition to the rupture of the fairing, there were only 118 seconds. Within these 118 seconds, Peter needed to accomplish two things.
"The first one: give you a hell of a beating!"
Withstanding massive G-forces, Peter lunged toward Carnage. In a supersonic environment, he wasn't sure if Carnage could hear what he was saying, but the other party could undoubtedly see his movements.
Cletus's arms transformed into blades, and the tentacles on his back softened before hardening into countless razors that slashed toward Peter. Mechanical claws retracted from Peter's back, catching Carnage's blades, and he slammed a heavy punch directly onto the two arm-blades Carnage was swinging.
With one punch, Carnage's arms began to shatter, followed by rapid regeneration. Peter attempted a backflip to dodge another of Carnage's attacks, but the rocket's momentum nearly threw him off. Fortunately, he grabbed one of Carnage's tentacles just in time to avoid being hurled into the void.
"This is it, Spider-Man! Your webs, your strength, all your abilities are useless here! This is the graveyard I prepared for you!" Carnage's legs split into nail-like feet that anchored him firmly to the rocket's outer hull, allowing him to walk with relative ease. He manipulated his tentacles to drag Peter close: "Die!"
"Sorry, what was that?! The wind is too loud, I can't hear you!"
Amidst the crisis, Peter timely used his back claws to wedge into the rocket, then delivered a kick squarely into Carnage. Carnage was thrown into the air, but Peter's webbing snagged him. Peter then cast a spell, using the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak to further reinforce the restraint on Carnage. The bound Carnage was slammed down near the rocket's engine exhaust, emitting a shriek that even the supersonic environment couldn't suppress.
Only then did he crawl back, still hindered by the chains.
"Honestly, I thought you were immune to pain. Well? Ready for more?"
Carnage narrowed his eyes. The two were essentially talking to themselves since they couldn't hear each other's voices. Carnage chose to manifest a massive shield and advance steadily, attempting to crush Peter's room for maneuver.
Peter acted swiftly. His nano-suit began to shift, taking the form of the Iron Spider armor. The Arc Reactor fired an energy beam at full power, hitting Carnage's shield and blasting a hole straight through it.
There was no one behind the shield. Cletus had already reverted to his original, more agile symbiote form, slipped into the interior of the rocket, and emerged behind Peter.
He possessed the ability to bypass Spider-Man's Spider-Sense, and in this supersonic environment, Spider-Man couldn't detect his sneak attack at all!
Peter spun around and threw a punch, completely disintegrating the symbiote on Cletus's face, then grabbed him by the throat.
"Regrettably, I previously encountered a teacher with a very bad attitude. He gave me quite a few 'lectures on what symbiotes can do.'"
As Peter spoke, he maintained his grip on Cletus's neck and activated the nano-suit's molecular sonics. Under the influence of this device—the same one that had once separated Venom from Peter—the Carnage symbiote began to peel away from Cletus like potatoes being run through a grater.
Moreover, Cletus discovered to his horror that his control over the other Carnage-infected hosts seemed to have been blocked for the time being.
He couldn't receive any signals from other symbiotes, not even the ones right next to him.
The trouble didn't stop there. The even greater problem was that he had now reverted to an ordinary human, forced to endure near-lethal G-forces, high-altitude hypoxia, and the unprotected supersonic environment. The situation took a sharp turn for the worse. Had Peter not used a portion of symbiote webbing to lash him firmly to the rocket, he likely would have died instantly.
Then, he watched as Spider-Man used webs to anchor himself to the rocket's hull and began using the Iron Spider's thrusters to try and adjust the rocket's trajectory, aiming to force the rocket—originally destined for space—to plummet back to Earth.
No, there's still a chance...
Cletus realized something. He believed in his lover, believed in the bond between them. Before all the symbiote on his body was cleared and before he fell unconscious, the remaining Carnage symbiote hiding inside the rocket erupted with startling power. It seeped through the rocket's surface and merged with Cletus once more.
However, Cletus could clearly feel that he truly could not communicate with or control the majority of the symbiotes he had infected.
But it doesn't matter. While Spider-Man is busy correcting the orbit...
The freed Carnage re-hardened himself and crept up behind Spider-Man, swinging his scythes. But the opponent once again managed to dodge the strike even without Spider-Sense, then performed a backflip and... jumped off?
The jumping Spider-Man launched a mix of webbing and nanobots at Cletus. These nanobots, capable of merging with the symbiote, instantly became a cage for Carnage. They began trying to pin Cletus firmly to the rocket. As for Spider-Man, he had already fled.
Peter hurriedly diverted the suit's remaining power, driving the Iron Spider thrusters to fly away from the rocket's trajectory. He watched the rocket soaring toward the Atlantic, having already entered unmanned waters, and checked in with Coulson.
"Is everything finished on your end? Carnage should have lost control over the NASA employees."
"Yes, everything is ready. Looking at the satellite feed, that was a very close call just now, Spider-Man."
Coulson praised Peter's actions and then relayed the message to the other side: "We are finished here. Captain Mar-Vell, please begin."
Back on the rocket, Carnage, who was struggling to break free from the nanobots, felt a sudden alarm bell ring in his mind. The simulated sense derived from Spider-Sense began to issue frantic warnings. But hasn't Spider-Man already fled? He only needed a few seconds to break free, and he would still be able to shove the symbiote into the rocket's separation stages, causing an even worse infection! He would make that fleeing Spider-Man regret it!
However, just as Cletus broke free from the nanobots, he noticed the sky grow dark.
It wasn't because of cloud cover. It was because a massive, sword-shaped starship had pierced the atmosphere. The ship's prow was aimed directly at the rocket flying over the Atlantic, which had not yet begun its separation. The energy beams, already primed for firing, locked onto the rocket and opened fire.
A beam of energy nearly large enough to cover an entire city, kilometers in diameter, poured onto the rocket and the still-trapped Carnage in an instant.