After some thought, she hit on it. "Here's what we do — we run targeted advertising to mid-to-large companies. Get our name out there."
"We produce and distribute promotional booklets explaining our concept and what we can actually do for a business. The *content* almost doesn't matter." She paused for effect. "What matters is this: we coat the pages with fluorescent material. So even in total darkness, they're visible."
"Think about it. The first wave of booklets will get buried on desks and ignored — that's guaranteed. But picture some executive burning the midnight oil, or commuting home late. It's dark. And there, glowing on the table or in the passenger seat, is our ad." She spread her hands. "Are they really not going to pick it up and glance at it? Even if they don't need our service right now — does it leave an impression? *That's* our opening."
The room went quiet as everyone ran the scenario in their heads. It tracked.
"That's actually smart," Wesley said, a trace of genuine surprise in his voice. "You come up with this yourself? You've got a good read on people."
Daisy accepted the compliment graciously. She certainly wasn't going to mention that the idea came from a men's magazine feature she'd read in a previous life back in July 2011.
"Data analytics — building a vast network in a complex modern world, a web where every person and every event is mapped and quantifiable. We collect it, analyze it, act on it. This is uncharted territory." She let the words land. "Our ceiling is enormous. Who knows — we might even be running presidential campaigns someday."
Nobody in the room committed to the vision out loud, but they didn't dismiss it either. They dispersed to get to work.
David stayed on the code — optimizing, trimming the algorithm. Wesley took on company formation and external-facing business, his look better suited to the corporate-elite mold than anyone else's. Ms. Matsumoto began contacting printing houses and chemical suppliers — navigating the certification maze for promotional materials required someone fluent in regulatory law, and that was her.
Meanwhile, Daisy personally visited the principal of her old parish school, thanked her warmly for the institution's years of support, and donated ten thousand dollars toward academic resources. In return — completely above board, naturally — the principal used a quiet favor with a contact to bump their material safety review to the front of the queue. Perfectly legal. Just a small fast-track.
One week later, the booklets went out to corporations across the city. Of the fifty thousand dollars Nick Fury had "personally" donated, just over ten thousand remained.
Three days after that, their first inquiry arrived.
A mid-sized chain restaurant had launched a series of new combo meals and wanted a customer satisfaction survey — simultaneously farming the work out to several consultancy firms.
Traditional methods meant armies of surveyors, random sampling, printed questionnaires, data collation, weeks of turnaround.
Skye Data Analytics had none of those costs. They scraped social media, forums, review sites, and Twitter, ran the numbers, and produced a statistically precise satisfaction index in hours. The algorithm also categorized user complaints by frequency, isolating the top recurring issues and laying them out in clean, actionable order.
Skye delivered only the data. What to *do* with it was the client's problem.
When James Wesley walked into the restaurant's conference room and placed the report on the table, the executives stared at it in disbelief. Another firm had barely started conducting interviews. These people were already done.
The numbers weren't just fast — they quietly corroborated patterns the restaurant's own internal reports had been hinting at. When they adjusted their combo lineup that same afternoon based on the findings, same-store sales climbed three percent by the end of the day.
The lead executive was delighted. He called the other firm, terminated the contract on the spot, and wired Skye Data Analytics the full fee of seventy-five thousand dollars.
All it had cost them was a bit of electricity.
The following week brought two more contracts. Fifty thousand on one. Sixty-five thousand on the other.
Things were moving. Word was starting to spread in a small but growing circle. Several competing consultancies had already taken notice.
None of them would hire corporate spies over a few thousand dollars — but Daisy wasn't taking chances. It was time to make the trip to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy. Whatever the future held, that knowledge base was something she needed.
She divided up responsibilities one more time among the team, then began packing. Fury hadn't given her the address directly — he'd told her to find it herself. Honestly? Not much of a test.
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The Triskelion — S.H.I.E.L.D.'s main headquarters — was located on Theodore Roosevelt Island in the Potomac River, between Washington, D.C. and Virginia. The island covered about 0.36 square kilometers (~0.14 square miles), dense with forest and winding walking paths. Nestled among the trees, visible above the canopy, stood several towering structures. That cluster of buildings was the headquarters of the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement and Logistics Division — a name so long and unwieldy that everyone just used the acronym.
Fury had dropped the name S.H.I.E.L.D. as a hint. Any reasonably sharp person could work backward from the organization's official full name to its location. Daisy already knew the answer and skipped the deduction entirely.
Over the weekend, she changed into a plaid button-down, jeans, and sneakers, slung on a backpack, put on her sunglasses, and drove out to Washington.
The Washington Monument, the Capitol Building, the White House — she gave each a passing glance and moved on. After watching those landmarks get demolished in every other action film, the real versions held about as much novelty as a movie set.
That said, the city itself was pleasant. Tree-lined streets, clean air, a relaxed pace. Tourists and locals scattered across the green, reading or chatting in pairs and threes.
She followed the road northeast from the Lincoln Memorial until a checkpoint at the riverbank flagged her down.
She presented the magnetic key card Fury had given her. The guard verified her identity and waved her through.
Her, yes. The car, no.
Daisy didn't argue. She parked in a lot on the near side of the bridge — a lot full of gleaming vehicles that made her battered old Ford look like it belonged in a museum. She called Ms. Matsumoto: *Come pick it up when you have time and sell it. Fury said he'd arrange new transport anyway.*
She shouldered her pack, cleared a second checkpoint, and started across the bridge on foot.
Scanners, cameras, radar arrays swept past her as she walked. When they registered her key card, they fell silent one by one.
The bridge was empty. No senior trainee waiting to welcome her, no one assigned to carry her bag. Just her, alone, walking into this quiet and secluded island.
She followed the winding path — left, right, left again — for the better part of an hour before the trees broke open.
The Triskelion filled her view.
The main building was enormous, dominating more than half the island. It rose approximately three hundred meters (roughly 1,000 feet) into the sky. Standing there looking up at it, Daisy thought of Captain America leaping from the Triskelion's midsection and actually felt a flicker of sympathy. Using her vibrational powers to bleed off momentum and land softly? She could probably manage that. Jumping barefoot off a skyscraper just because she felt like it? Absolutely not.