Striking at Nazis was politically bulletproof — not just within S.H.I.E.L.D., but across the entire Western world. If the intel checked out, it would do wonders for Daisy's career, and it would serve as serious political capital. She didn't expect Nick Fury to promote her without reservation, but that was a problem for later. For now, she was still firmly in Fury's camp.
"Where? Tell me." She kept her voice steady, grave.
Viper had no shortage of chips to play. The trouble was, most of them were the kind that got people killed — and she couldn't risk that. Throwing a half-dead Nazi faction onto the table was already risky enough. She had to be certain Daisy would finish the job in one clean strike, leaving no survivors to come looking for her afterward.
Being a villain wasn't as easy as it looked.
She rubbed her heavy, aching head and pushed herself to focus. "If I tell you — what exactly are you planning to do with it?"
Daisy gave her an odd look. "Report it to the Director, obviously. Have a team assembled and go wipe them out. You don't seriously think I'd go in alone?"
Anything touching the Nazis was never small. She didn't have the muscle for something like that — she'd blend in as support, contribute from the edges, and let the big guns do the heavy lifting.
Viper exhaled quietly. Even between mortal enemies, HYDRA's upper echelon had a grudging respect for Nick Fury — calling him the greatest intelligence operative of the modern era wasn't a position anyone would contest.
If Fury himself led the operation, the Nazi remnants would be finished.
Viper weighed it carefully, then decided to trade someone else's life for her own. "Antarctica. Longitude 71.20, latitude 81.91°S. It's the last sanctuary Adolf Hitler chose for the Thule Society."
"S.H.I.E.L.D. has swept Antarctica multiple times," Daisy said, genuinely curious. "At least three major operations that I know of. Independent teams have gone in too. How have they stayed hidden this long?"
Viper seemed to recover a fragment of her usual superiority. She gave a soft, disdainful hum — and if you ignored the red, raw nose, she actually managed to pull it off. "The Red Skull has technology far beyond anything the modern world has developed. That's what's kept them alive. The Yashida clan has also been quietly supplying them for years. Beyond that, I couldn't tell you — I've never been there personally."
Daisy made a quiet sound of acknowledgment. She hadn't expected the Yashida clan's missing resources to connect all the way back to the Nazis. In a way, she'd solved that part of the mission by accident.
A flicker of recognition moved through her — something in the memory she'd carried from before, now finally clicking into place through the thread of the Red Skull's name. This was what she remembered as a major event: Fear Itself.
It was the Red Skull's daughter who had started all of it. If her memory was right, deep inside the Antarctic fortress lay a hammer — one belonging to Skadi, the Norse goddess of the winter hunt. The chosen host for that hammer was the Red Skull's daughter herself.
Daisy had never understood why these Norse deities were so fond of dropping hammers on Earth, but she had no intention of touching this one. Skadi's hammer was the key to resurrecting Jormungandr, the World Serpent. Anyone other than its chosen host would find it immovable.
She memorized the coordinates, then turned her thoughts to the more delicate problem: how to present this to Nick Fury. A text or email was obviously out. She needed a clean evidentiary chain — something that pointed to her own discovery, not to an inside source like Viper feeding her classified information.
"Too many germs in here," she said at last, and Viper's face immediately brightened. "Let's get you out."
She bundled two extra coats around Viper and left everything else behind.
"How are we leaving?" Viper scanned the room, then noticed Daisy sitting perfectly at ease. Her stomach dropped. She's not about to send me on a one-way trip, is she?
Fortunately, Daisy had standards — just selective ones. Viper was far too useful, and the Chthon contract made killing her a complicated proposition anyway.
Daisy raised her hand and opened a rift of shimmering light, gesturing for Viper to follow.
"So your power makes you special — big deal. Hmph." Relieved it wasn't an execution, Viper stepped through.
They reappeared several miles away. Daisy pulled out her phone and tapped a command — the safe house went up in a controlled explosion right on schedule.
"You know, your ability is genuinely impressive," Viper said, savoring the novelty of teleportation for what appeared to be the first time. She couldn't quite contain her curiosity. "Any interest in working together? Your silent infiltration plus my toxins — there's no target in the world we couldn't take down."
Daisy snorted. I have a bright future ahead of me at S.H.I.E.L.D. You want me to throw that away and go play assassin with you? Not a chance.
"You still have other safe houses, right? Hey — are you listening—"
She turned around just in time to watch Madame Viper fold like a ragdoll and hit the ground, limp and unresponsive.
Viper's face was an alarming shade of red — not normal at all. Daisy pressed the back of her hand to Viper's forehead.
Burning hot.
She let out a long, resigned mutter. "Now I have to babysit you? Just my luck."
She found a small roadside inn, rented a room, and got to work.
S.H.I.E.L.D. had a full medical training curriculum, and Daisy had gone through it — not to Sharon's level, but she knew the IV drip and temperature-reduction protocol well enough. She listened to Viper's chest through a stethoscope to rule out anything cardiac.
What she found was worse than a cold.
Viper's lungs were clearly compromised. A week of no treatment, combined with a constitution dramatically stronger than any normal human — which paradoxically meant her immune system hit harder and crashed harder — had turned the cold into pneumonia.
On top of that, years of working with extreme toxins had left residual compounds in her system. With her immunity now collapsed, those compounds were spreading in ways that defied standard classification.
Cold virus plus residual exotic toxins. Whatever that new compound was, Daisy had no name for it.
She ran an IV for half the day. The inflammation didn't ease — if anything, it was getting worse.
She called Sharon.
The treatment options for something this straightforward were limited: IV fluids, hydration, fever reduction, anti-inflammatory medication.
Sharon's suggestion was to let the patient sweat it out — let the body purge the toxins naturally. But looking at Viper's visibly dehydrated state, Daisy couldn't see how more sweating was going to help. That seemed more likely to finish her off.
Modern medicine didn't have a better answer.
Desperate times, desperate measures. Daisy strung up four IV bags — one for each limb — and flooded Viper with fluids and anti-inflammatories, then stepped back and let her body do the work.
With Viper sidelined on the bed, Daisy settled into the chair and closed her eyes.
The cultivation principles she'd absorbed from K'un-Lun's teachings on qi had been quietly turning over in her mind. Before, she could only interpret her vibration strings on a macro level — the fine-tuned application had remained frustratingly blank. But qi cultivation, developed by brilliant minds working from first principles and cross-referenced with traditional Eastern martial philosophy, had blundered forward over centuries in a way that happened to map cleanly onto string theory. Their accumulated practical knowledge was proving genuinely useful.
She let herself feel for the subtleties. Slowly, she opened her power outward.