Watching her own underwear being scrubbed by someone else's hands felt deeply, uncomfortably strange. Daisy decided she had urgent business elsewhere, and headed for her room.
Maki called after her just before she disappeared. "The bathroom is clean too. You can use it whenever you like."
Daisy had been running all day. A shower actually sounded ideal.
She'd barely pulled her shirt over her head when the bathroom door swung open and Maki walked in, wearing only her underwear, eyes bright with what she would describe as sincere helpfulness. She explained, very calmly, that she was here to scrub Daisy's back.
Daisy declined. Firmly. She thought about the kind of story where this situation would develop in a satisfying direction, acknowledged that this was not that story, and stood her ground until Maki retreated.
Over the following days, Daisy cycled through discomfort, mild embarrassment, and eventually something close to genuine acceptance. She drew hard lines around the most private aspects of her daily routine — and Maki respected them. Everything else, from meals to laundry to keeping the apartment running, Maki simply handled. It was, Daisy had to admit, extremely comfortable.
Once they'd settled into something resembling a rhythm, Maki began voicing quiet opinions in her capacity as "retainer." Her primary concern was that Daisy was squandering her appearance. Going out without makeup, wearing no jewelry — in Maki's view, this was almost criminal. Daisy's natural features were genuinely striking, and she was choosing to hide them.
Daisy listened with reasonable grace and absorbed about thirty percent of what Maki told her. She chose not to examine how much of that thirty percent she'd actually apply.
A few more days passed. Maki started what appeared to be a conversation several times, then pulled back each time. Eventually Daisy gathered that Maki wanted to learn close-quarters combat.
That's awkward. Daisy didn't actually know how to fight — she'd been running entirely on enhanced physicality. There was nothing to teach. She deflected by telling Maki to focus on passing the bar exam first and getting a real job before worrying about anything else.
Daisy kept monitoring the Japanese group in the meantime. Nothing. They weren't looking for her. Whatever the consulate had communicated, it had been effective.
Life continued.
The school closure became official. Daisy watched from a distance as James Wesley — a fresh bruise visible on his face — shook hands with the school board, locking down the paperwork. Students with connections and resources began transferring out one by one.
"Daisy, what are you going to do next?" her roommate asked, with a face that belonged on a lost puppy.
Daisy obviously couldn't say I'm planning to throw down with S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA. She was fairly certain her roommate would have her evaluated.
But they'd never quite operated on the same frequency anyway. Her roommate was consumed with credits and scholarships and GPA. Daisy's mental landscape was full of Chitauri, Thanos, and cosmic entities most humans wouldn't live long enough to worry about.
She had lunch with her and walked her to the convenience store for her shift. Then she was alone.
She sat on a bench by the street, bright eyes tracking the flow of pedestrians, running quiet math in her head. The law books, the clothes, the groceries, the daily supplies — she'd burned through about two thousand dollars of the ten. She sat there calculating what she could realistically do with the remaining eight thousand.
"Hm."
A signal entered her awareness — murky, dense, like something pushing back. She turned.
An elderly woman was moving slowly along the sidewalk, leaning hard on a cane, watching Daisy with open curiosity. She moved carefully, hunched over, every step deliberate.
Distinct features. A sharp triangular gaze. A face creased with decades of wrinkles, like bark on an ancient tree.
Daisy extended her awareness carefully. Her vibration sense hit something — and was deflected. Not absorbed, not ignored. Deflected, the way a frequency bounces off a dense, resistant medium.
In New York, only one person she could think of had that kind of presence.
Madame Gao. One of the five fingers of the Hand. An elder expelled from K'un-Lun. She looked like a strong wind could knock her over. She'd been alive for over four hundred years — old as the Ming Dynasty.
Chance meeting — or did the Japanese send for her? Daisy didn't jump to conclusions.
"Can I help you?" she asked in English.
The ancient face rearranged itself into something resembling a smile. She answered in Mandarin: "What lovely eyes you have, young woman. Like stars scattered across a night sky."
Daisy didn't need her vibration sense to feel what was underneath those words. The hostility was thick enough to taste.
She picked up her bag. "Crazy old woman," she said under her breath, and walked away briskly.
She hadn't covered 300 meters (about 980 feet) when the sound of rapid footsteps rose behind her. Two large men were following her.
The street was still relatively busy. She could demonstrate what "enhanced human" looked like — but drawing that kind of attention was a bad idea.
Lead them somewhere quiet, then deal with it. For now: run.
In most stories, the heroine in this situation would panic prettily. Heart pounding, she'd glance back repeatedly, walking fast but not running, because running would ruin the heels and the pencil skirt.
Daisy had no such limitations. She was in long pants and canvas sneakers, and she had no particular attachment to the concept of feminine composure. She took off.
The men behind her went blank for a moment. Someone who bolted like this wasn't something they'd encountered before. Orders were orders, though, and they ran.
They fell behind within 500 meters (about 0.3 miles).
She ran like something from a nature documentary — fluid, explosive, her long legs eating up the pavement with effortless rhythm. She read the street in real time: gaps, angles, elevation changes. She cleared obstacles with a single bound. She hit walls at a run and redirected off them, maintaining speed through turns that should have killed her momentum.
The two men behind her moved like a pair of black bears — heavy, powerful, effective in a straight line, completely out of their depth.
"Cut her off at the front!" one of them shouted into his phone.
Fine. If she couldn't lose them clean, she'd pick the ground. She kept moving, but now she was choosing a destination.
She covered two more blocks and found a wrought-iron gate across an alley. Without breaking stride, she planted one foot on the gate, used the bounce to rise half a meter (about 1.6 feet), caught the top edge, swung her legs up — and dropped cleanly on the other side.
Behind her, the two men arrived at the gate and stared at each other.
They knew the area, and there were enough of them spread out. Losing one woman shouldn't have been this complicated. The only unexpected variable was how fast she moved.
They split up.
Daisy moved through the alley network, mapping footstep sounds from four directions, calculating distances and closure rates.
They think I'm prey. That's a mistake.
She found a shadow, pressed herself into it, and waited.
A man with sleeve tattoos walked past her position. She released a focused vibration pulse into the back of his skull.
The force carried him nearly 3 meters (about 10 feet) forward. His head connected with the brick wall. He went down without a sound and didn't move.
Daisy emerged, pulled on a glove, and went through his jacket. A SIG Sauer P239 at the small of his back — she ejected the magazine. Four rounds.
She also found $150 in his wallet.
"Barely worth the effort," she muttered. She wiped her shoe sole on his jacket — she'd run through a puddle earlier and picked up mud — and went to find somewhere to keep him until she had time to ask questions.