Who was coming after her? HYDRA? Vanguard Tech? The Hand? Maybe the Republican Party?
There were too many options. Too many to even narrow down.
"Keep this quiet and carry on as normal," she told the administrator. "I'll handle it." She left with the surveillance footage and strict orders to say nothing.
Back at her apartment, she ran through the video twice. Nothing. These people were professionals — they'd left zero traces.
The clinic's computers were equally clean. The intruders had copied the files and gone. No damage, no tampering, no fingerprints.
Is this about me? About Obama? Or is it purely for the money — or the Wolverine gene research? She lined up the possibilities in her head. Every single one felt plausible.
Even S.H.I.E.L.D. wasn't above suspicion. She kept the agency out of it entirely and placed a video call to the port of Madripoor, somewhere in Southeast Asia.
Viper picked up mid-swim. The woman never stopped performing — she spent a solid thirty seconds angling her face toward the camera, hunting for what she apparently considered her best side.
"What does S.H.I.E.L.D.'s future director want with me?" she asked, all warmth and calculated charm.
"Has anyone in the underground been targeting me lately?"
Viper rolled her eyes. "Ignorant. Your name has been circulating in certain circles for quite a while. You just didn't know about it."
Daisy went blank for a moment. She conceded the question was too broad. "What I mean is — is anyone specifically after information about the ALS clinic? Anything?"
Viper thought for a moment, snapped her fingers at someone off-screen, and a tall woman materialized with a tablet. She scrolled rapidly.
"One hundred and fifty-five entries about getting exclusive control of the drug formula. Thirty-nine about kidnapping key personnel — twenty-five of those are specifically about kidnapping you." Viper kept scrolling and commenting without pausing. "These people clearly have no idea what you're capable of. Poor things…"
Daisy felt a fresh headache coming on. Did she really come across as that easy a target to the outside world?
Then again, maybe that wasn't the worst thing.
"The drug is derived from Wolverine's genes, isn't it?" Viper said, wearing the expression of someone who worked this out months ago.
Viper had spent years studying Wolverine's regenerative gene alongside old man Yashida. Daisy had no illusions about hiding it from her. She nodded without hesitation.
"Too many threads, too tangled," Viper said, her expression shifting to something soft and melancholy — though she was clearly enjoying the drama of it. She stifled a yawn with practiced elegance. Unfortunately her smoldering gaze was entirely wasted on her audience.
Daisy wasn't paying attention to her face. Her mind was working through options, two competing instincts battling each other — let it go versus hunt them all down and wipe out every last one of them.
"Let me think this through," she said. "Whoever knows my real strength wouldn't send a team this small. And whoever doesn't know my strength wouldn't see me as a threat either. So it's not about me — your hundred-plus entries don't fit the profile."
She ticked off the other options. "It's not about Obama either. The rules of political warfare don't allow anyone to go the violent route. Anyone who tries that dies badly."
Strip everything away, and what's left is the answer. "It's about the Wolverine genes. The genetic data itself. That's what they're after."
She looked back at Viper. "You fed me that story about a hundred people targeting me as a distraction. You know exactly who did this. Don't you, Ophelia?"
Viper's eyes shifted — just slightly, just for a moment. When she spoke again, she took her time. "This has nothing to do with you. My network is… extensive. There are a lot of moving parts."
Daisy pushed forward. "But we're friends. And those other people are just business partners. That's a different thing entirely, isn't it?"
Viper very much wanted to say we're barely acquaintances, but faced with Daisy's apparently sincere gaze, she could only sidestep. "It genuinely has nothing to do with you. It's a small matter, really—"
"Military, isn't it?" Daisy said with quiet certainty. Viper blinked — didn't nod, didn't shake her head.
"Weapon X," Daisy said. Confident.
This time Viper's expression shifted for real. She hadn't expected Daisy to know about Weapon X. She didn't ask where the information came from — you either know a thing or you don't.
The truth was Daisy had guessed. She had no actual source. But the logic held, and sometimes a confident guess, delivered right, lands like knowledge.
Weapon X wasn't just well-known in certain circles — it was legendary. The project had grafted Adamantium onto Wolverine's skeleton. It had built Deadpool. Years later it would produce X-23. The program had run on military black-budget funding from the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 all the way through 2029, the year Wolverine died in battle. A lifespan of at least seventy years.
In some ways, Weapon X had outlasted S.H.I.E.L.D. itself — the organization Peggy Carter and Howard Stark had built together. It had certainly stayed more hidden. The program was still producing Wolverine clones in 2029. The money never dried up. The scientists never stopped.
Meanwhile, Daisy's little S.H.I.E.L.D. team would probably be starting 2029 with nothing but a stray dog and whatever they could scavenge.
An organization with that kind of survival instinct was not something she wanted to poke. Her nerve failed her immediately.
But she wasn't about to show that. Viper didn't know what Daisy knew about the program's future. That was her edge.
She cleared her throat. "They won't want me for my abilities, will they? If I explain I'm not a mutant, they probably won't listen."
Viper suppressed a private eye-roll. Who would want your 'impressive' power? What research value does it even have? But she kept that to herself. Whatever the strange circumstances of their acquaintance, Daisy was her only real friend.
"They won't notice you," Viper said. "I'll make sure of it."
The call ended shortly after.
Daisy thought it through. There were billions of people on Earth. You had to do something genuinely earth-shattering to get anyone's attention. Between the scale of the world and Viper's cover, she was safe.
She went back to the clinic and filed a police report. The officers arrived, made noise, collected evidence, and left. Daisy walked away and let them chase whatever threads they wanted to chase.
Evening settled over the city.
Men and women in bright clothes filled the streets, the night alive with neon and noise, traffic flowing in every direction with more energy than the day ever held.
Daisy watched it all through the window, a coffee spoon turning slowly in her hand, a vague sense of being removed from all of it.
"Been waiting long?" Maria Hill's voice came from just behind her.
Her tone was slightly breathless. Daisy turned — Hill was out of uniform tonight, wearing a T-shirt and a denim skirt, softer than usual, though the overall impression was still clean and sharp. Daisy's own outfit ran along identical lines.