Daisy used her connections to maneuver Garrett into a Democratic Party reception—casually, with every appearance of doing him a favor—and introduced him to several senior military figures aligned with the party.
Like Nick Fury, who still carried a Colonel's rank despite everything, Garrett hadn't started his career in intelligence. He'd come up through the military. He was a Colonel too, and always had been.
A few conversations with those senior officers started at a surface level and deepened over successive meetings, leaving them genuinely impressed. The breadth of Garrett's operational history and the quality of his tactical instincts were hard to dismiss.
Discreet inquiries followed: would he consider leaving S.H.I.E.L.D. and reintegrating into formal military service?
The military was going through a generational gap. Active operations were running hot overseas. Officers old enough to carry real experience didn't want to be there. Officers young enough to be effective were reluctant to go. Every general was managing from a safe distance—and the optics were becoming a liability. A general willing to operate at the front would shift the entire narrative.
What the military was offering was sparse by conventional standards: one rank promotion, nothing else. In exchange, Garrett would need to lead units in forward operations.
For a general officer embedded in the traditional military hierarchy, that offer was an insult. For an intelligence operative like John Garrett—an old field man who'd spent his career in the dark—it was something different entirely.
He was currently a Colonel. One step up was Brigadier General.
Some people assumed ambition and status-seeking were cultural quirks specific to certain societies. They weren't. The desire for rank and recognition was human and universal. Everyone wanted it. That was simply human nature.
Garrett craved recognition more than most. He'd pursued genetic enhancement to keep his body in fighting condition precisely because he wanted to stay relevant—to hold his position near the top of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s hierarchy for as long as possible.
Now something better was extending a hand.
Afghanistan didn't concern him. He'd spent his career in places far more dangerous than that. And more importantly, generals didn't go in alone—they went in surrounded by entire units. To him, a deployment like this barely counted as dangerous.
Stay in S.H.I.E.L.D., running shadow operations, doubling as a HYDRA asset? Or step into the light, command real forces, and finally receive the recognition that came with it?
He thought about it for fifteen minutes. Then he made his decision.
———
Daisy had broken into S.H.I.E.L.D.'s network before she was ever officially part of the organization. Now that she was on the inside, she had access to watch without restraint. When she was paying attention, very little stayed hidden.
Garrett met with Pierce twice. The first meeting nearly ended in a fight. The second was calmer—barely.
"Whatever your plan is, I don't want to know," Garrett said quietly, standing in the former director's office. "I won't expose you. But stay out of my way."
"I know how your people operate. Assassination. Staged accidents. Poison. I'm getting old—maybe I can't stop all of it." A pause. "But if you try, be ready for everything to surface."
Daisy's listening device only caught Garrett's side of the exchange. Pierce said nothing throughout—not until after Garrett left, when the sound of something shattering confirmed he was still alive and very much not calm.
Three days later, Garrett sat down with Nick Fury for a long, private conversation. Fury had no idea his old colleague was HYDRA. He just heard that a trusted veteran wanted to return to formal military service—and he was genuinely glad to hear it.
Intelligence work had a brutal survival rate. Most people who went into it didn't walk away cleanly. From Fury's perspective, Afghanistan might as well have been a quiet posting.
They drank through the night. The next morning, Garrett officially separated from S.H.I.E.L.D.
He didn't sever every connection. He left Grant Ward behind as his proxy—a legacy inside the organization—and took only a handful of his oldest and most trusted people into the military with him.
Without Garrett as the conduit, Ward's connection to HYDRA's high command fractured overnight. Learning that his mentor had changed course, Ward began following suit—technically complying with Pierce's direction while doing as little as possible to follow through.
Garrett had been one of HYDRA's twelve Zodiac members—too senior in standing for Pierce to treat as a subordinate. They operated as near-equals, with Garrett holding a marginally lower position. Now that equal was gone. Pierce felt the isolation almost immediately.
And without Garrett available to personally vouch for the cause, recruiting new assets from within S.H.I.E.L.D. became significantly harder. The door that Garrett's reputation and credibility had held open was now closed.
Within just a few days, Pierce was practically tearing his hair out.
Daisy hadn't taken her focus off him. From where she sat, the man had everything—power, influence, a family, and he was already past the peak of a successful life. No obvious grievance. By any objective measure, he'd reached the top. So why HYDRA?
Ambition. The kind that never stopped once it got what it wanted.
There was no converting someone like that. Daisy shifted her attention to his lieutenants.
Two familiar faces stood out: Jasper Sitwell and the far more physically dangerous Brock Rumlow, also known as Crossbones.
One handled the administrative side. One provided the muscle. Together they were the two structural pillars of HYDRA's presence inside S.H.I.E.L.D.
Unfortunately, Daisy's own read and PERIL's probability modeling both landed at the same conclusion: neither was likely to be turned. Sitwell was timid and had no real scruples—he'd do whatever kept him safest. Rumlow was a true believer. There was no angle there.
She turned it over for a while. Nothing obvious came to mind. She'd have to watch and wait.
———
A week after Saving Private Ryan opened wide, a handful of media invitations arrived.
After filtering through them, the maid set two options in front of Daisy.
"The Oprah Winfrey Show, or Vanity Fair?" Daisy looked over both packets. She didn't mind doing press—visibility and reputation were worth building. Either one would serve that purpose.
By raw audience size and cultural reach, Oprah was the obvious choice. But Daisy had no particular interest in Oprah, and the tone of the invitation rubbed her the wrong way—it read as though Oprah's team was doing her a favor.
Fury, Obama, Storm—those were people at the top of their respective fields. Engaging with them made sense. A television personality who'd built her platform entirely on emotional performance and audience chemistry? That held no appeal.
The Vanity Fair team had sent a journalist in person—polite, prepared, and clearly invested in getting her specifically. Oprah's office had mailed a form invitation—take it or leave it. The difference in how much they actually wanted her was obvious. Daisy didn't hesitate.
"Should I eliminate her?" the maid asked, voice flat, watching Daisy's reaction to the Oprah invitation.
The maid's instinct for drastic solutions never really changed. James Wesley had brought it up more than once—that she had a habit of leveling the courtroom with a stare so cold that judges and entire juries had been known to physically tremble. People who didn't know her couldn't tell whether she was a defense attorney or a professional threat.
"No need. She's just a talk show host." Daisy waved it off. "Tell Vanity Fair I'll do the interview."