Daisy was full of doubts. She set aside the urge to start mowing everyone down and floored the accelerator instead, racing forward.
She'd only made it about five hundred meters—one more turn and she'd have been heading into Philadelphia—when a tall man with a metal arm stepped out into the road.
"Run him down! Run him down!" Sitwell knew the Winter Soldier on sight. He knew this was a killing machine. He was screaming at her.
Daisy's eyes narrowed. Bucky was holding a strange-looking weapon. He fired. A disc-shaped projectile spat out of it.
A mine launcher?! Daisy's promotion to Director was apparently arriving faster than expected. The disc tracked slow to her perception, but Bucky's targeting was precise. The car couldn't dodge.
She grabbed Sitwell with one hand and kicked the door open with the other. The explosion came right on cue. The car flipped end over end into the air.
She used the momentum, hauling Sitwell out as she went.
The car had carried serious inertia. The road was wide open. She didn't want to expose her flight ability, so she settled for a one-handed manual landing. Mid-air, her body twisted. Right knee bent, left knee dropped into a crouch, right hand still pinning Sitwell, left hand flicked out claws that gouged five shallow trenches into the asphalt. She slid almost ten meters before friction finally bled off the inertia.
"Run!" She shoved Sitwell aside and squared off against Bucky. The hunter in her was alive—she wanted to see Cap's old buddy's combat for herself.
Sitwell wanted to scream are you insane?—but, being Sitwell, he said nothing, turned, and ran.
Gunfire kicked off again. Bucky tossed the mine launcher, pulled the M4 off his back, and opened up on Daisy in tight controlled bursts. She fired back. Both of them moved on Z-pattern footwork, dodging while shooting, until both magazines were dry. Neither had landed a hit.
Bucky didn't slow down. He dropped the M4 and drew a SIG Sauer P226 from his hip, putting another stream of fire into Daisy's space.
She cursed under her breath and kept evading. The man's hand-to-hand was clearly competent, but he was packing an entire armory.
Modern firearms still hit hard. Even her body density wasn't enough to make point-blank rounds painless. They'd cut her, bleed her. Bucky had Kevlar combat gear. Her shirt offered exactly no protection.
She launched into an aerial roll to dodge the burst, kicked off an advertising column on the roadside, and used the rebound to close the distance.
His pistol ran dry. He pulled a submachine gun off his back. She couldn't keep letting him pick the engagement—too passive. Curling a finger, she yanked at his center of mass with gravity. He stumbled a single step before recovering, but that was all she needed. She'd already closed in. A flying kick swung straight at the side of his face.
Bucky's expression stayed completely flat. No underestimation just because she was a woman. The metal arm came up to block at full force. Her foot crashed into the steel and the impact rang clear up her shin. Bucky himself was driven back a full step.
He didn't flinch. He whipped a double-edged combat knife from the small of his back and used his height advantage—stab, slash, thrust, transitioning continuously, pressing the attack.
Daisy's stat line was higher than Bucky's. Combat experience was where he had the edge. He fought with that suicidal commitment of someone who'd traded survival instinct for forward pressure—he wouldn't dodge, wouldn't yield, drove the blade straight at vital points. If she didn't want to trade injury for injury, she had to keep changing technique.
The knife went flying out of his grip. He pulled his right hand back, twisted at the hips, and threw a metal-armed haymaker straight at her face.
"You think I'm afraid of you?!" Daisy didn't have her Vibranium bracers on. But she was confident her raw strength wasn't far off his metal arm's. She threw a punch right back at him.
Steel fist hit human fist with a heavy crack and a small shockwave radiated out. Daisy got knocked back two steps and shook out her hand. That stings. Strength was even, but his fist was metal and hers was bone, muscle, and skin. She'd come out worse on that exchange.
"What's that arm running on, anyway? Your metabolism?" she couldn't help asking.
Bucky didn't bother answering. They went back to trading. Fast, hard, more than ten exchanges in seconds. Without using her superpowers, Daisy—fighting at a reach disadvantage—wasn't gaining ground.
"Catch!" Ward had been suppressed by the HYDRA gun line and forced to fall back. Seeing her in close-quarters with Bucky, he didn't hesitate—he tossed his pistol over.
She caught it on reflex and was momentarily speechless. You threw me a handgun. What exactly is your read on this situation? But she couldn't refuse it. She brought it up, fired a few rounds, and forced Bucky to back off.
Ward had lost two of his men. The pursuing enemy still numbered over a dozen. The math didn't favor them.
Or so it seemed...
Bucky picked up another weapon from one of the shooters. His firepower was monstrous, and the man genuinely didn't fear death, with reflexes faster than ordinary humans. With him entering the fight, Daisy had to peel back to Sitwell, who hadn't gotten far. She, Sitwell, Ward, and his remaining men formed a small clutch and started a fighting retreat.
Daisy's marksmanship was no worse than Bucky's. With Ward's support, casualties were running roughly even.
Just as the engagement started to lock into stalemate, an attack helicopter dropped into the airspace.
A heavy machine gun opened up, hammering the center of the firefight zone with rounds. Behind the gun: Crossbones, his face pure murder, glaring down at both groups.
"Stand down!" His position above gave him pressure on everyone. He hadn't come alone. He'd brought a tactical team—a full unit of HYDRA in S.H.I.E.L.D. combat gear.
More than thirty operators encircled them.
Daisy looked at Ward and Sitwell. I'm going to need an explanation here. Is this how HYDRA's internal team-building exercises usually go?
For a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent embedded inside HYDRA's S.H.I.E.L.D. branch, Daisy was feeling the weight on her shoulders.
Pleased with the reception he'd commanded, Crossbones stepped down from the chopper. He turned to Daisy first, almost like exchanging a passphrase, and called out, "Hail Hydra."
Daisy responded without missing a beat, perfectly natural, calling it back. Ward, standing beside her, jolted in shock—he'd been playing pure white knight here, and had no idea about the deeper context. His expression went complicated.
"This isn't personal. There was a misunderstanding somewhere in the chain. I assure you, this won't happen again." Crossbones explained, sincerely. He tossed a phone over to Bucky. The voice on the other end was Pierce's, ordering a withdrawal. Bucky turned without a word and walked away.
As Bucky disappeared down the road, the scene fell into silence. Crossbones looked at Daisy. Coerced or otherwise, Pierce had pulled back. War or peace was now on her.
If she were actually HYDRA, this was the moment to use the opening to put Pierce in the ground. But she wasn't. There was a limit to how far you could ride a borrowed tiger.