Daisy gave a slow nod.
She'd read Fury's reports front to back. He'd done extraordinary work—documenting events past and projected, mapping Earth's position within an interstellar context that was almost entirely bleak. In his assessment, if a spacefaring civilization ever turned its full attention toward Earth, humanity had no credible answer for it.
She couldn't argue with his conclusion. In her understanding, Earth was the heart of Eternity—one of the Five Cosmic Entities—which meant the planet would survive anything short of universal collapse. But that was not something she could explain to Baldy. So she stayed quiet.
"If something comes at us from out there, what exactly do we use to stop it? Your powers? How many can you handle? Stark's Iron Man armor?" He kept going. "You've read my report on Captain Marvel. A living Earth woman—no external device required. Flies beyond lightspeed. Operates freely in vacuum. Controls matter at the molecular level. Absorbs energy with effectively no upper limit. Tell me—who else on Earth can do any of that right now?"
Daisy had no immediate response. Plenty of mutants could surpass Captain Marvel and then some. They just stayed out of the public eye, and S.H.I.E.L.D. didn't know it.
The ethical argument had failed to move him. She pivoted to the practical.
"Captain Marvel's capabilities are impressive—agreed. But the research has stalled. What if you shifted direction entirely? Take the results you already have from the Kree specimen and apply them to developing medical serums—actual treatment for ordinary people. Would that be viable?"
Fury looked at her with the expression of a man who had just realized the argument was about something else entirely. Oh. That's what you meant.
From Fury's perspective, what mattered was humanity's survival and Earth's security. Whether individual citizens lived or died of disease, whether they got cancer or were killed in car accidents—that was not his direct mandate. He couldn't say that aloud, but it was true.
He turned it over. "What's the scope? How much of the specimen are we talking about?"
Daisy intended to disassemble it completely. Fury bristled—the expression of a man who had not expected this particular opening move. "What use is half a torso? Give me a ship and I'll fill it with aliens. Blue, white, black—take your pick."
"If I had a ship, I wouldn't be asking you," Baldy said.
After considerable negotiation, she secured one arm and half the ribcage. She tasked the research team with developing a concentrated regenerative serum—for field agents recovering from severe injuries, or for terminal conditions affecting agents' immediate families.
The material was genuinely finite, by Earth's current reach: one arm, a handful of ribs. Without running a large-scale Kree acquisition operation, production would be small. Limited quantities, no natural replenishment on the horizon. Daisy had no plans to sell it. Distribution would be internal to S.H.I.E.L.D. only.
Like a faction-exclusive item in an MMO—available in restricted quantities, loyalty-tied.
Every agent had come from somewhere. Parents, spouses, children. When a colleague pulled out a vial that cured what hospitals couldn't, something would shift in how they thought about the organization. That kind of emotional investment couldn't be manufactured—but it could be earned.
Serum development would take time. Daisy left Washington and resumed the inspection.
The final stop: the joint S.H.I.E.L.D.-NASA research center. Primary project on the books: the Tesseract.
Victoria Hand came out to receive her wearing the expression of someone nursing a persistent grievance.
Whatever her opinions about Daisy personally, the organizational math was unambiguous: Daisy outranked her on every count.
Hawkeye had quietly positioned himself between them. He wanted nothing more than to be home with his wife and kids—getting caught in the crossfire between these two was the last obstacle between him and that warm domestic life he kept thinking about. He operated on the theory that proximity prevented escalation.
As it turned out, Daisy wasn't interested in being petty. The fundamental incompatibility between her and Victoria Hand wasn't something that could simply be made to disappear—but right now she wanted to demonstrate forbearance, that she was capable of working with anyone. She greeted Hand in a measured, professional tone. No pressure, no friction. A brief civil exchange about the work, and Hawkeye exhaled.
She dismissed the non-essential members of her entourage. Went in with Victoria Hand and Hawkeye.
"Dr. Erik Selvig," Hand said, making the introduction. "Astrophysicist, NASA."
Daisy nodded. Thor's landing in New York had played out differently from what might otherwise have been. Without Thor and Jane Foster ever developing any meaningful connection, Selvig had come to the Tesseract project through NASA rather than through any personal channel—arriving at the research from a different direction entirely.
"Any progress, Doctor?" Victoria Hand called across the room.
Selvig put down his instrument with visible impatience. "Progress? What kind of progress do you people want from this thing? Enough to level a city? Wipe out a species at a stroke?"
Daisy glanced at Victoria Hand and Hawkeye. What's his problem? Did he skip his medication?
Hawkeye's expression confirmed that working daily with a volatile old man was exactly as miserable as it appeared.
She crouched down and examined the Tesseract. It pulsed with a low, eerie light, its interior dense with shifting patterns—as if something vast and incomprehensible had been compressed into a perfect cube.
"Don't touch it, young lady." Selvig materialized at her shoulder. "That's power beyond anything you can imagine."
Daisy nodded with appropriate gravity. Absolutely, no touching. She wasn't Baldy—she couldn't grab the Tesseract bare-handed and walk away from it.
Her gaze drifted casually across the nearby instruments, earning Selvig's contempt. Another bureaucrat playing at scientific curiosity.
In reality, every part of her concentration was submerged in string resonance—invisible vibrations threading through the room, mapping how the Tesseract was operating from the inside out.
Red Skull had used it as an energy source. S.H.I.E.L.D. had done the same. They'd bought the box and missed the treasure entirely—a sports car repurposed as a storage shed. The Tesseract's actual capabilities had never been touched.
Two quiet pulses, and she understood immediately why. Like the Power Stone requiring physical conditioning from its user before granting access, the Tesseract—as the outward expression of the Space Stone—had its own requirements. Strict ones.
The Stone had its own proto-consciousness. Without its recognition, the power simply wasn't accessible.
Using the Gauntlet the way Thanos did was a workaround—it drove the Stones rather than worked with them, like an engine driver rather than a true wielder. The Gauntlet could be ripped off and handed to someone else; the Stones wouldn't resist. They remained indifferent either way.
Daisy could take the same approach, but producing her Infinity Gauntlet of uncertain authenticity here wouldn't help her. No Power Stone meant no way to shatter the Tesseract's outer casing. She was blocked.
And the Stones had to be seated in sequence to activate the Gauntlet: Power, Space, Reality, Soul, Time, and Mind last. Break the order and the mechanism simply wouldn't engage.
Thanos—who had spent centuries clutching the Mind Stone without being able to use it before eventually passing it off to Loki—had firsthand experience with exactly that.