Daisy sat quietly and let herself feel the amulet's inner workings.
Eastern tradition would call it a tiger spirit sealed within — a living essence preserved in metal. Daisy's interpretation was more clinical: the mental and instinctual signature of a real tiger, recorded at a specific moment and embedded in the amulet at a particular frequency, preserved like a snapshot in amber.
The amulet was an object without a mind of its own. It couldn't adapt or respond. It could only replay that one frozen moment in the tiger's life, over and over.
She put it on and took stock.
Raw strength — comparable to what she already had. No meaningful gain.
Speed — significantly inferior. Tigers weren't built for velocity. She already had them beat.
Endurance — same story. She could feel no boost whatsoever. If anything, she suspected her baseline outlasted the tiger's recorded endurance.
What did interest her wasn't the raw stats. It was the technique embedded in the amulet — the way a tiger channels force, how it accelerates, how it uses its muscles. With the amulet on, those patterns surfaced in her body like instincts she'd always had. Short-burst acceleration. Mid-sprint direction changes. Obstacle vaulting. And something she hadn't expected: a running technique that let her defy gravity for a short stretch, running along vertical surfaces for a few strides before momentum gave out.
The only genuine ability the amulet granted her was instinct. Wild instinct.
Her threat detection sharpened considerably. By her estimate, it was still a tier below Spider-Man's spider-sense or Wolverine's animal awareness — but it was real, and it was useful.
Beyond that, the amulet also gave a minor boost to reaction speed. Tiger reflexes were somewhat faster than her baseline — not dramatically, but enough to matter when dodging gunfire, reading the frequency of nearby vibrations, or fine-tuning her spatial sense during a teleport.
She turned it over in her hands for a long while and found nothing else of note.
At the end of the day, she'd already outgrown street-level. The amulet's ceiling was below where she was standing, and her potential far exceeded it.
She knew the amulet had other functions she wasn't accessing — but her mental resonance with it was poor. The connection between her consciousness and whatever lived inside the amulet felt like trying to speak a language through a thick wall. She could feel the shape of it, but not the meaning. She wasn't about to open her mind fully and let a tiger take up residence, so the research stopped there.
Daisy fashioned the tiger head and claws into a bracelet and slid it onto her left wrist. In public, it would just look like an interesting piece of jewelry. You never knew when something like that might come in handy.
All told, the amulet was a solid acquisition. If she outgrew it completely, she could always pass it on — Hill came to mind. Those pale blue eyes of hers had always had something feline about them. Sharp and direct, they had a habit of making Daisy feel like prey.
As for taking someone else's destined artifact without a moment's guilt — she felt none. She'd arguably done Hector a favor. He'd never walk into that life. His niece would survive. His sister would survive. The whole family could go home to Puerto Rico and live peacefully. America was dangerous. Let them go.
The film kept playing in theaters. By the time it entered wide global release, the calendar had turned to June 2007, and politicians were already ramping up for next year's elections — the noise was everywhere.
Jurassic Park was making noise of its own. Film professionals had plenty of criticism, but they swallowed it the moment they caught the expression on the major studio heads' faces — the this subject is closed look. The public, unburdened by such complications, was happy. Audiences walked in curious, walked out excited, and told their friends. By any measure, the film was a success.
The theater chains were not about to short-change SHIELD. Box office returns from the opening week were deposited into the SHIELD account in full, according to the revenue-sharing agreement.
Nick Fury stared at the fifty million dollars that had appeared in the organization's books. He hadn't expected to see that money come back — the film investment from six months ago, written off in his mind, had apparently paid off. SHIELD was good at spending. The Security Council was perpetually on the verge of a breakdown over SHIELD's expenditures. Earning was something else entirely.
He had Daisy brought to his office.
It was her first time inside. She took it in with genuine curiosity — the perpetually air-conditioned room that looked the same at every hour of the day.
Nick Fury was exactly as she remembered: long coat, eye patch, his gleaming shaved head apparently designed to store secrets.
"Your coordination was solid," he said without preamble. "Staffing was sensible. I didn't expect you to have an eye for this kind of thing."
Hill had mentioned Fury wasn't much of a film person — Daisy had always assumed he didn't think much of the project.
Being praised by your boss called for two responses: a modest deflection, or a gracious acceptance. Accepting it outright made you look arrogant. Humble-bragging required skill. Foreign or not, basic modesty was universal.
And laying out her full strategic reasoning in front of him would be pure stupidity.
Daisy said nothing about the film's broader implications. She attributed the success to Phil Coulson — deflecting credit toward the director's closest subordinate was the kind of move that told leadership I know how to play the game.
Fury said nothing for a long moment. His single eye fixed on some point in the middle distance.
Just as Daisy was starting to wonder whether someone had polished his head to a shine, he spoke.
"You don't need Sharon digging around for the Adamantium anymore. I've connected you with a seller."
Daisy proceeded carefully. "How much?"
She'd quietly pocketed a fair sum from the production budget, but high-grade alloy of this caliber was something she genuinely might not be able to afford.
Fury's expression was unreadable. "You don't pay. SHIELD covers it."
Her stomach dropped immediately. She knew that tone. Nothing is free. "What do I have to do?" She blinked. "Forget it — I'll find it on the open market myself."
"You won't. The global supply is locked inside top-tier research facilities run by major powers. Even with your particular skill set, making a move on any of those would take considerable effort."
He said stealing from world powers the way someone else might say picking up dry cleaning. Completely without legal conscience.
Daisy ran a quick internal calculation on how feasible it would be to vibration-teleport into one of those facilities. She tilted her head slightly. "SHIELD must have its own supply."
"We do. You'd still have to earn it."
The conversation had looped back to exactly where it started.
She finally understood what Fury was doing. "Fine. What's the mission? Am I going alone?"
"Hill and the others are committed elsewhere. Your combat capability is strong, but more importantly—" His eye settled on her. "You're good at running away."
"A field operative isn't a soldier. You don't win by taking everyone on at once. There have always been operatives stronger than you in any era — but where are they now? Surviving a dangerous situation, making it out alive — that is what separates a good operative from a dead one. In that respect, you outperform both Hill and Sharon."
Daisy looked at him sideways as he delivered this verdict on her cowardice — which he had somehow reframed as tactical intelligence and decisive self-preservation. Still, it landed well. This man knew how to give a compliment with architecture.
She accepted it.
"Do you know about the X-Men's Professor X?"
She nodded. Professor X was one of the most significant mutant figures on record. SHIELD kept extensive files on him.
"Wolverine is currently en route to Japan. A mutant with precognitive abilities contacted the Professor — warned him that Wolverine is in danger. The Professor reached out to us requesting backup at a critical moment." Fury paused. "The Adamantium you need is also in Japan. I've made contact with Shingen Yashida, the head of the Yashida clan. He's agreed to provide what you're looking for."