ACT 1: Eddie Brock is at the cemetery, visiting the tombstone of his dead ex-wife. Vengeance filling his every thoughts, he turns into Venom. Someone, who remains unseen by the reader, appears and tells Venom that his personal vendetta against Spider-Man will have to be put on hold for a while. Furious, Venom attacks the interlocutor but the latter somehow manages to separate the symbiote from Eddie Brock.

ACT 2: Back at the apartment that Peter Parker shares with Randy Robertson, the two are counting their savings to see how much money they have to go grocery shopping. Jill Stacy and Gloria Grant are paying them a visit. Gloria tells them that dinner is on her tonight and asks Jill if she wants to join her in showing the boys that it is possible to live on something other than toaster cakes and cheese products. Jill has a prior engagement so she declines the offer. Randy kisses both girls' hands and tells them they are lifesavers and that one day, Peter and him will find a way to repay them. Peter reminds Randy that they need to find a way to bring in more income. Randy suggests to Peter that he auction off some of Mary Jane's belongings over the Internet. As soon as makes that suggestion, Randy realizes how completely insensitive and stupid his suggestion was. He apologizes to Peter, who seems distressed. The tense moment is interrupted by Jill Stacy's cell phone beeping. It's her dad: Arthur Stacy. A 911. He wants her home now. Jill asks Peter to accompany her to see her dad since it has been forever since he has seen him. Peter awkwardly agrees, grabs a bag containing his Spider-Man costume and web-shooters from the closet, and both him and Jill make their way to her dad's place. As soon as they are out of the apartment, Gloria punches Randy on the shoulder for what he said to Peter earlier. Randy apologizes to her.

ACT 3: Some time later, at the home of the Stacy family in Forest Hills, Queens. As Jill and Peter enter the house, Arthur is waiting for them. He is furious that Jill did not return his page and that Paul, his son, hasn't called yet. Peter notices that Arthur is carrying some kind of weapon under his jacket but does not dare mention anything. Arthur appears to be even more over the edge than he was a few weeks back when he tried to assassinate Senator Ward, which he would have done if it hadn't been for Peter, as Spider-Man, stopping him. His paranoia appears to stem from the fact that he knows something about Senator Ward; something that could cost his life and the lives of many more. Paul Stacy enters the room and tells his father that he’s had it with his delusions of paranoid conspiracy and shoves his cell phone into his father's jacket pocket. Furious, Arthur grabs Paul and pushes him face first into a wall, telling him that for once in his life, he will do exactly what he tells him to do, which is to stay at the house to make sure that his sister, Jill, is safe. Realizing that the situation is getting out of hand, Peter and Jill pull Arthur away from Paul, while Peter slips a spider-tracer inside Arthur's jacket pocket. Arthur takes his leave. Paul abruptly tells Peter to leave as it does not concern him. Not wanting to create more drama, Peter leaves, but not without grabbing a letter that Arthur dropped on the floor during the scuffle. Minutes later, as he makes his way back home, Peter reads Arthur's letter. It is from Senator Ward's office. And it indirectly threatens both Arthur and his children. Peter starts realizing that Arthur may not be crazy after all.

ACT 4: Washington, D.C., the offices of Senator Stewart Ward of New York. Ward's secretary is on the phone with Susan Strong, Senator Robert Kelly's top aid, who is in dire needs of talking to Senator Ward. Unfortunately for her, Ward is out of town. She tells the secretary to have him call her as soon as he returns, that is it extremely urgent. As Susan drops the phone on the floor, the reader catches a glimpse of her legs, which appear to be decomposing.

ACT 5: A short time later, Peter has switched from his civvies to his Spider-Man costume and is tracking Arthur with the aid of this spider-tracer. However, our hero encounters a bunch of high-tech super terrorists, and is slightly delayed by having to dispose of them. Once they are apprehended and handed over to the police, Spider-Man returns to tracking Arthur. Arthur is making his way through shadowy streets when he encounters an old friend of his: the Ranger, who was first introduced in Peter Parker Spider-Man Volume II #1. It seems that they have a past together and that it involves Ward, who according to them, should be dead. Suddenly, Ranger opens up Arthur's jacket and finds the spider-tracer. Arthur is perplexed as to how the tracer ended up there. Ranger takes one of the small spider-legs off of the tracer and disables the signal, though keeping the tracer, feeling that it may come in handy. Some distance away, Spider-Man has just lost the spider-tracer signal. Feeling hopeless, he heads home and goes to bed.

ACT 6: A couple hours later, he wakes up from a bad nightmare and now that he is awake, he goes out for a swing. He hears the screams of police sirens and web-slings down to further investigate. When he arrives at the scene, he finds Eddie Brock, resisting arrest and tossing around several cops. Peter tries to reason with him but Eddie just wants to kill him, as he explains that his ex-wife Ann committed suicide because she was afraid of him, Spider-Man. Although our hero feels bad for Eddie's loss, he punches him right in the nose and knocks him out, apologizing as he does that. Suddenly, his spider-sense goes ballistic so he tracks down the source of the danger. Some time later, he arrives that the home of Arthur Stacy in Forest Hills, Queens. He finds his spider-tracer giving off feedback on a concrete wall right next to the backdoor leading into the Stacy’s house, which has been broken into. He smashes the tracer into pieces as Arthur emerges through the broken door. He tells Spider-Man that he didn't know how else to get his attention so he rigged up the tracer to emit a greater signal. He tells him that Jill and Paul left just before Ward's men arrived and that Ward is coming for him but that he will most likely strike at him through Paul and Jill. He boldly asks Spider-Man to assist him in killing Senator Ward before he kills his children.

ACT 7: At that moment, the unknown individual who separated Eddie Brock from his alien symbiote at the start of the issue is revealed to be none other than Senator Ward. It is also revealed that Ward is sharing his body with an alien life form in the form of a virus and that he hopes to learn from the Venom symbiote how to coexist with another being. A decomposing Ward is shown on the last page of the issue, holding the symbiote and trying to merge with it.