Hill was a professional. Even outgunned and working with a standard Glock against targets built like tanks, she hadn't broken — she'd moved, and kept moving, until the centipede was dead and the caterpillar was on its last legs. Precision over firepower. That was all she'd had, and she'd made it work.
By the time Daisy arrived, Hill was bent double, hands on her knees, gasping for air.
No powers. No exotic ammunition. Just training, speed, and a brain running tactical calculations in real time — all of it on a body that hadn't actually slept last night, because a certain massage had kept her awake until dawn running through questions she had no satisfying answers to.
Under that kind of pressure, a record of one win and a draw wasn't just acceptable. It was impressive.
But whatever awkwardness the night before had built between them, it had also done something else — knocked down a wall. They didn't pretend to be strangers anymore. Not when they were alone.
"What are these things?" Hill asked, still catching her breath. "How does something get like this?"
"Pym Particles, most likely," Daisy said, thinking it through. "If the particles can compress atomic spacing to shrink something, the reverse should hold — you expand the spacing and scale everything up."
She paused, pulling from half-remembered quantum physics and the MCU knowledge she'd arrived with. "That said, it's not straightforward engineering. There's probably custom genetic sequencing involved on top of the particle application."
She recalled that the second Ant-Man had taken giants to an entirely new level — and in the comics, the original had done it too. And then there was Hank Pym himself, standing alongside one of the cosmic entities, shoulder to shoulder, having a conversation like it was a normal Tuesday. Pym Particles were genuinely in a class of their own.
"Scientists," Hill muttered. "Never satisfied."
Daisy almost laughed out loud. The scientists of this world really were the root cause of everything — prosperous or desperate, healthy or dying, they would always, always find a way to break something interesting and then make it everyone else's problem.
Gunfire echoed from the building ahead.
They reloaded on the move and ran.
The interior was a warzone. Bodies on the floor — enemy combatants, no insignia, no identifying marks on their clothing, but weapons that were uniform and clearly military-grade. The tactics were disciplined. Whoever these people were, they were elite.
Natasha and Sharon were pinned — working with handguns against full-auto rifles, staying alive through movement and Natasha's seemingly bottomless supply of small tools and tricks. The moment they stopped moving, the circle would close.
One of the attackers closed to melee range. Natasha caught his rifle barrel, pushed it to the outside, and drove one of her electrified batons into a part of his anatomy that made the word brutal feel like an understatement. He folded without a sound and didn't get up.
Daisy and Hill entered from the flank, and the tactical picture shifted immediately.
"Where's the doctor?" Hill called out between shots.
"Underground level!" Natasha shouted back, voice carrying over the firefight. "We need him and we need the research data destroyed — if that technology gets out, this gets a lot worse!"
Daisy suspected the data was already out. These soldiers — no markings, excellent training, unwavering discipline even with the body count rising — they had a particular feel to them. She was almost certain that if she shouted Hail HYDRA across the room, at least half of them would answer. She chose not to test that theory. Hard to explain how she'd guessed.
The four of them pushed forward together.
It surprised her, slightly, that she'd adapted to the gunfire so quickly. She'd half-expected it to feel wrong — the noise, the chaos, the bodies. Instead something in her settled into it. This body liked this. It didn't just tolerate the crossfire — it leaned into it, calm and focused, almost eager.
Why do action heroes always stick to the same pistol no matter what? she wondered, stepping around a fallen enemy and picking up his M16. She brought it up, settled the stock against her shoulder, and started working controlled bursts — tracking motion, reading where rifles were pointing before they fired, and cutting the gap by half a second every time.
Half a second was the difference between walking away and not.
With Daisy suppressing, the other three found their footing. Natasha switched to an enemy weapon. Sharon did the same. Hill kept her Glock but worked her angles better now that the pressure had lifted.
Four women, four directions — the noose tightened on the other side.
The last of the attackers fell without retreating, without surrendering. They'd fought to the end, every one of them. No I.D., no insignia, no faces that appeared in any database Daisy had access to. Over a hundred men, and it was as if they'd materialized out of nowhere.
Let Fury figure it out. She filed the question and moved on.
Natasha led the way deeper into the compound. The others followed. Daisy, one eye on the impressive pile of abandoned rifles, reminded herself she still had the Rhino and fell in line.
They found Pym behind a security door in the basement. Natasha slapped a breaching charge on the lock mechanism, stepped back, and the door was gone.
Daisy's first look at Hank Pym: silver-haired, straight-backed, deeply lined face behind wire-rimmed glasses, exuding the particular authority of a man who had once been very powerful and had never forgotten it.
He didn't look at her. She might as well have been furniture.
He was alert the moment the door came down, and visibly relaxed only when he recognized Natasha.
"The lab has to go," he said immediately, voice sharp with urgency. "That man stole my work. Forget about me — go after him!"
First impression: not great, Daisy noted privately. He had the energy of someone who treated being rescued as a minor administrative inconvenience.
Natasha ignored the attitude completely. A mission target was a mission target.
"Daisy, take the doctor out," she said. "I'll pursue the enemy. Hill, Sharon — destroy the research data."
And then, because Natasha knew exactly what was in the works between Daisy and this particular old man, she'd framed the order to give Daisy a chance to make an impression. Daisy recognized the gift and accepted it without comment.
She grabbed Pym by the arm. "Let's go. Now."
They ran.