While exploring space for new habitable worlds, a probe belonging to the bio-engineering corporation Life Foundation discovers a comet covered in symbiotic lifeforms. The probe returns to Earth with four samples, but one escapes and causes the ship to crash in Miri. The Life Foundation transports the other three to their research facility in San Francisco, where they discover that the symbiotes cannot survive without oxygen-breathing hosts, which often fatally reject the symbiosis. Investigative journalist Eddie Brock reads about the human trials in a classified document in the possession of his fiancée Anne Weying, an attorney preparing a lawsuit defense for the Life Foundation. Eddie confronts Life Foundation CEO Carlton Drake about the trials, leading to Eddie and Anne both losing their jobs and Anne ending her relationship with Eddie.