The little lion had just waddled back from the woods looking thoroughly well-fed. It spotted Daisy crouched in the doorway, beckoning through the gap, and launched itself into a run. In its experience, that gesture meant playtime or a snack—either way, good news. It charged over without a second thought.
It got within five meters (roughly 16 ft) of her, pushed off its back legs, arched its back for the pounce they'd practiced dozens of times together—
And got completely played.
What happened next was too fast even for animal eyes to follow. A golden blur, and then a rope of seemingly endless length had it wrapped head to toe.
Thump. The little lion hit the carpet face-first.
Daisy trotted over, patted its head with exaggerated sincerity, and then asked how it felt.
Feeding in her psychic power, she could loosen or tighten the lasso at will. The lion sent back a clear signal: fear. Why it was afraid, how it was afraid—beyond that, animal communication could only go so far.
She didn't want her pet developing a grudge. She retracted the lasso quickly, rolled around on the floor with it for a while, and eventually smoothed things over with the short-memoried creature.
I need a proper human subject.
After half an hour of play, her psychic power had recovered about one-fifth. She made up an excuse about business and slipped into a certain captain's quarters.
Hill took one look at the rope in Daisy's hand and immediately started waving both hands: absolutely not, do not even think about it.
Even with her evolving preferences, Hill was nowhere near into that kind of thing.
Hill was the most principled woman Daisy knew—decisive, iron-willed, nearly impossible to move once she'd made up her mind. Daisy hit a wall and moved on to her last option: the maid.
"Sure, go ahead." Maki stood before her with serene composure.
Daisy almost said you don't have to be so composed about it—but skin-to-skin contact did produce the clearest readings, so she let it go. Her right arm swept a wide arc, and with a quick hiss, the lasso had the maid neatly bound.
"Maki, what does it feel like?"
"Hot. All the way through, from the inside out. And a kind of fear—like something terrifying is right there." Maki's gaze was soft and languorous, but the answer made Daisy nearly spit blood. She couldn't quite figure out where exactly Maki's heat was coming from.
"Are you sure? Try shifting to smoke form—see if you can get out of it."
As it turned out, smoke form won out completely. The lasso worked on physical matter; smoke was smoke. It simply slipped through.
She left Maki to enjoy herself and stepped out onto the street, looking for a couple of oblivious troublemakers to give the lasso a real workout. New York's crime rate had apparently improved considerably lately—she walked two full blocks without a single delinquent making trouble. Her field research was put on hold.
The lasso had come to her in a strange way. Rationally, she was uneasy about it. But instinct said it wasn't dangerous. Two contradictory readings, no clear answer.
The golden lasso couldn't turn invisible, and it had a habit of sticking close to her. She couldn't walk around with gold rope dangling off her arm—she'd have to keep it in her bag, or wind it around her waist under her clothes.
The Ancient One had given her coordinates for K'un-Lun. She'd studied them, and honestly couldn't figure out what she'd even do there yet. If someone there asked, "Why have you come to K'un-Lun?"— she could hardly say "The Ancient One referred me." That would be mortifying.
Still, she knew the Ancient One didn't do things without reason. K'un-Lun went straight to the top of her itinerary.
Get on the train first, buy the ticket later.
Daisy had jumped onto the HYDRA train without a formal ticket. The organization was loose—anyone could walk in, no application required—but she still needed to take care of one missing formality, or the cover could fall apart at any moment.
She arrived well before sunset at a hillside villa in the New York suburbs, scaled the roof, and settled in to wait for the owner to come home.
Viper moved with a particular grace even off-duty—each stride carrying a subtle roll of the hips, deliberate enough to turn heads but natural enough to deny intention. Even Daisy, watching as one woman watching another, found it something to look at. And this was Viper not even trying.
Viper swept into the entrance hall, kicked off her heels, let a servant take her scarf, and changed into pale green pajamas.
She worked through a full dinner before dismissing the staff. Then she raised her eyes toward the exact spot where Daisy was hiding. "Come out, sweetheart. Or am I supposed to send a formal invitation?"
Daisy looked bewildered. "How did you find me? You finished your whole dinner before you called me down!" She was annoyed. How stingy—was Viper afraid she'd eat her food?
Viper tilted her chin toward the corners of the room.
"Security cameras. I found those ages ago—but I've been adjusting my vibrational frequency. Your cameras can't pick me up when I'm doing that."
Viper turned her head slightly and didn't elaborate. She wasn't going to admit she'd become acutely sensitive to vibrations lately. Daisy's first vibration, and she'd known.
"You wouldn't come to me without a reason. Talk."
Daisy wanted to say I'm here to formalize my membership, but that felt beneath her. The lasso had opened a better play.
She let her voice drop into something grave. "What are you, really? And what does Hail HYDRA mean?"
This time, she couldn't use a Bavarian accent for the slogan. She deliberately mispronounced one word, and let the last note hang.
Viper's expression shifted entirely. Those fox-bright eyes held Daisy in place for a long moment—reading her. Deciding she wasn't here to fight, she gradually let her guard down.
She sidestepped the question of her identity and asked instead how Daisy knew that phrase.
Daisy told her. Nine parts truth, one part fabrication—with the beginning and end trimmed off.
Viper's face stayed tight at first. When she heard that Pierce had sent people after Daisy, the tension cracked; the corner of her mouth started to move. She suppressed it—barely.
When Daisy got to the three-way standoff, to the part where she'd leveraged Pierce into handing her the Deputy Director position—Viper finally laughed. Fully, without restraint. Face red. Both hands slapping the table.
"So stupid. So completely stupid! I'm dying!"
Daisy privately agreed the whole thing was hilarious, but she was here under a serious pretext, so she'd held her expression flat the whole time.
The sustained gravity apparently pulled Viper back to earth. She considered the situation.
"You know what HYDRA is?" She'd been recruiting through seduction for so long she'd half-forgotten what HYDRA's actual mission statement was. She thought about it, couldn't quite recall, and threw the question back.
"S.H.I.E.L.D. has records. In the early days, the Red Skull—" Daisy had done her homework. She recited the S.H.I.E.L.D. dossier on HYDRA word for word.
Viper clicked her tongue. "That information is ancient history. HYDRA doesn't look like that anymore."