All four representatives were politicians. No political animal on Earth, not in this era, could afford to be caught defending Nazis in an open session. They unanimously passed the resolution within minutes: apprehend the Nazi operatives. Shoot anyone who resists.
Each of them delivered their own personal condemnation of National Socialism with appropriate flourish—one mentioned a grandfather who'd been murdered when the representative was nine years old; another had a whole speech ready—and then they cut their feeds and went to brief their respective governments.
Fury didn't actually suspect Pierce of being a spy. He pulled the old man into the planning process for a different reason: to give a respected former Director something to put his name on in his retirement years. A final moment of relevance. Pierce, caught off guard but not opposed, went along with it.
The two directors issued joint orders. Every Level 7 or above S.H.I.E.L.D. agent currently on base was to report immediately.
Daisy recognized faces as they filtered in: Coulson, May, Ward, Black Widow, Hawkeye, Sitwell. And from photographs—John Garrett, Victoria Hand, and the man currently going by Brock Rumlow, who wouldn't earn the call sign Crossbones until later.
"We don't have time for a long briefing." Fury planted himself at the front of the room. "Field coordination falls to Agent Johnson."
Daisy read the move for what it was—recognition for her work, and a test in the same breath. She started to say "Understood—" and got exactly one syllable out.
"Excuse me." Victoria Hand raised a hand. The woman looked exactly as Daisy had imagined: fitted blazer, red hair, square frames, the air of someone who had never once found a situation amusing. "Who is she? Unless I'm mistaken, the minimum clearance level in this room is Level 7."
Daisy kept her expression pleasant. Internally, she was composing a memo to her future self: When you're Director, reassign Hand to restroom inspections.
She couldn't take the swing out loud. Hand was a Level 8 agent—effectively the institutional voice of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s academic wing. She wasn't one of Fury's inner circle, and she wasn't HYDRA. She occupied a careful middle ground, and that made her tricky to move around.
Daisy let her eyes drift to Fury. His call.
He'd anticipated this. "Agent Daisy Johnson has distinguished herself in the field. Director Pierce and I are jointly authorizing her elevation to Level 7, effective immediately."
Pierce had no idea when he'd agreed to this, but he didn't argue.
With two directors—one current, one emeritus—both nodding, Daisy Johnson skipped Level 6 entirely and landed at 7.
Two rungs seemed modest. It wasn't. Level 7 was a threshold—the entry point to the senior agent tier, with access to intelligence that most of the organization never saw. In most cases, clearance and rank aligned. There were exceptions—she knew Hill technically held a Level 5 designation but operated at Level 8 authority, a quiet arrangement Fury had built in to give Hill a layer of deniability—but those cases were rare.
The promotion was done. Hand didn't like it, and she made no effort to hide that. But she didn't push back further.
The dynamic in the room was what it was: a newly minted Level 7 agent directing field veterans, some of them unit commanders. By S.H.I.E.L.D. precedent, it wasn't unheard of.
Daisy ran a fast internal assessment. Field deployment, tactical positioning, force allocation—these were disciplines she'd studied without ever excelling at them. Not in Hill's league. But she'd been to that base. She'd seen the layout. Surprise was already on their side, which simplified the problem considerably.
Direct teleportation was off the table. Range constraints, and more importantly, she wasn't ready to put her ability in front of a room this size.
She started assigning roles. "Garrett, Coulson, Rumlow—take your direct squads and rendezvous at the Dock."
She addressed Garrett with a nod that acknowledged his seniority—he was old-guard S.H.I.E.L.D., and whatever else he was, he'd earned the basic courtesy.
"Agent Hand." She turned without hesitation. "Contact the Iliad. I need them combat-ready in fifteen minutes."
"Agent Sitwell. Begin notifying governments along the transit corridor."
"Barton. Move ahead and establish high ground. If anything bolts, I want to know about it."
"Romanoff. Take a tech team and get the sound suppression gear and perimeter nets in place—I don't want a single person walking out of that facility. After that, full structural scan, surface and subsurface. I want the architectural layout on my screen in fifteen minutes."
She moved through the assignments quickly, but her attention kept snagging on the same problem. The high-end combatants—the ones with real force and real command authority—were disproportionately HYDRA. Garrett's unit had the best equipment in the room. Rumlow's special operations crew was built around him, and he was genuinely terrifying in a fight. She estimated, without her ability, she'd lose that bout cleanly.
Hawkeye and Black Widow were exceptional but solo operators at heart. Coulson had leadership instincts and no personal combat output to speak of.
Too much of the real power had drifted toward HYDRA. She filed the observation and pushed past it.
The rest of the assignments went out. She closed the briefing.
Since S.H.I.E.L.D. had no permanent installation in Antarctica, they'd route through the Caribbean—a facility called the Dock—and board from there. It added time, but it was the only clean logistical path.
Two hours later, the Iliad carrier group departed the Dock, bound south. They'd round the tip of South America and proceed to Antarctica. The Iliad in this period was a conventional carrier—no anti-gravity plates, no turbine arrays, nothing exotic. Just steel and displacement.
On the bridge, Daisy delivered the mission briefing.
Pierce had stayed back at headquarters to sit with Fury and wait for good news.
The HYDRA personnel in the room processed the target update with a certain careful stillness. They found each other with their peripheral vision and exchanged glances that said the same thing: none of us knew. Their reasons for wanting to avoid this particular fight were their own—but the assignment was already in motion, and backing out now, surrounded by colleagues on a carrier in the open ocean, was not a realistic option. Rumlow especially sat with that for a moment. If he'd known the target was a Nazi base before boarding, he would have invented an excuse to stay behind. He hadn't known, and now here he was. No plausible stomach ailment could save him. He swallowed the assignment and said nothing.
He'd be fine. Nazi bullets didn't care whether the man they hit was running a double identity. The math was straightforward: either the Nazis died, or S.H.I.E.L.D. did. Daisy trusted the HYDRA contingent to calculate that clearly enough.
She turned to the opposite side of the bridge. "Agent Hill—anything to add to the operational plan?"
Hill met her eyes briefly. Those pale blue irises were completely neutral. "Agent Johnson's assignments are well-distributed. Nothing to add from my end."
The words were professional. What the look said was something else entirely—something close to: Look at you. Gone for a few days and now you're running fleet operations. Moving fast, aren't you?
Daisy received the message. She didn't dignify it.