Unlike Daisy, who was just drifting through school, Angela's parents had a plan for her. The reason they'd enrolled her in this godforsaken church school in the middle of Hell's Kitchen was the school's established relationship with Yale University.
Most of the Ivy League schools had religious roots. A strong academic record or a heavyweight recommendation from a church institution could open doors that money alone couldn't. That pipeline was now in serious jeopardy.
"Why would they close the school?" Daisy asked.
She had zero attachment to the daily hymns — she could do without those forever — but this school was currently her only stable foothold. Until she figured out a real plan, she needed it.
Angela thought for a moment. "Supposedly some company is buying up all the real estate in Hell's Kitchen. They're going to tear down the whole neighborhood and rebuild from scratch."
Daisy opened her laptop, connected to the network, and searched. She found the answer quickly: Union Allied Construction — acquiring multiple properties in the surrounding area.
She frowned. That's earlier than it should be.
The man behind Union Allied Construction was Kingpin — Wilson Fisk. At this point in time, Fisk was nowhere near the peak of his power. Swallowing all of Hell's Kitchen on his own was beyond him, so he'd brought in partners and built the Union Allied shell company as cover.
But Daisy was sure she remembered this differently. The land purchases weren't supposed to start until after the Avengers' battle with the Chitauri — years from now.
She didn't have an answer for why it was happening early.
She returned to school over the next few days. The place had the atmosphere of a sinking ship. Teachers had stopped teaching. Students had stopped caring. Everyone was just waiting.
The only people smiling were a handful of board members. Kingpin had no interest in making enemies of a church school — they had terrible optics but excellent connections — so the demolition compensation he'd offered was generous. Almost suspiciously so.
Daisy watched it play out in person. Kingpin's representative showed up at the school: James Wesley — sharp suit, wire-rimmed glasses, the kind of polished, composed manner that made him look like he belonged in a boardroom rather than a criminal empire. The board members fawned over him like he was carrying a golden briefcase. They probably were, technically.
The negotiations wrapped up with startling speed.
Whatever her feelings about it, the school's closure was already decided. That left Daisy with two options. Option one: go find her own income. Option two: find another school, finish the high school program, then university.
She was confident she could make money. Powers in hand, two lifetimes of experience, and a bird's-eye view of the future — earning was doable.
But choosing a side was the real question.
The underworld was out immediately. At heart, she was still a law-abiding person — a failed one, maybe, but law-abiding. Drug running, organ trafficking, arms dealing: none of it interested her. And trying to build a criminal organization from scratch meant ten times the obstacles. Without a powerful patron, every new upstart in the game would come test her first. She could humiliate them one by one — but having to do it every single week would get exhausting.
She had no interest in building a name for herself in organized crime. That path wasn't for her.
Legitimate business had its own traps. Once she grew to a certain scale, S.H.I.E.L.D. would notice her. And if HYDRA noticed her first, she'd have a much bigger problem.
People tended to think S.H.I.E.L.D. and HYDRA were about equal in strength, based on how it looked in the movies. That impression was wrong.
HYDRA was enormous. Its structure broke down into four distinct layers.
The first was multinational corporations — legitimate businesses masking illegitimate ones. The Typhon Group alone reportedly employed 250,000 people; its board was deeply HYDRA-controlled. Food, pharmaceuticals, defense, aerospace materials — they had fingers in everything.
The second was government agencies: the Treasury Department, the FBI, the NSA, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), and others — either compromised at the leadership level or outright run by HYDRA loyalists.
The third was international criminal organizations. A.I.M. — Advanced Idea Mechanics, the same group that'd crossed paths with Iron Man — was one representative example.
The fourth, and only the fourth, was the intelligence apparatus. S.H.I.E.L.D. was just one piece of that layer. One "relatively important asset" in a sprawling machine.
HYDRA's liquid capital ran to hundreds of billions of dollars. Elite soldiers, trained and dispersed across dozens of global bases, numbered at minimum one hundred thousand.
Against something that size, Daisy had no illusions about her ability to fight back. Not yet.
She'd have to focus on what was in front of her.
Which brought her crashing into the most immediate problem: she was running low again.
The last wealthy mark she'd found wasn't the kind of opportunity that repeated itself. She needed money.
Angela nudged her toward applying for a job at the convenience store. Daisy said no without blinking. She was Quake. She wasn't going to stand behind a cash register. If Tony Stark was willing to scrub toilets, she'd reconsider.
She rented a car and spent a day circling Manhattan. Stark Industries, Oscorp, Rand Enterprises — all well above her current reach. Smaller places? She couldn't make herself care.
She passed Central Park and figured she'd take a walk. She didn't get far — police tape everywhere, a wall of officers holding the perimeter. She listened to bystanders gossip: something about a gang shootout, dozens of bodies removed from the scene. Not her business. She turned around.
She pulled open the car door.
A man was slumped across the back seat. Drenched in blood.
Her enhanced senses picked up a faint, thready breath.
She stepped back fast, ready to flag down the officers in the distance —
Then stopped.
She'd instinctively scanned his vibrational frequency.
Good. Genuinely good. Better than almost anyone she'd read since getting the ability. Upright, brave, fearless — those qualities registered clearly, stacked one on top of the other.
She let the words she was about to shout die in her throat.
Good people were rare in this world. If she could help, she should. And the Central Park shooting... she had a guess or two about what that was.
The man still had a thread of consciousness. He registered her approaching, seemed to think something, and passed out.
"Oh, come on — you see me and that's your response?" Daisy shut the car door and turned him over with some effort. He was heavy. Even with her upgraded strength, he was a challenge. Big guy didn't cover it.
He looked around thirty. Casual button-down shirt, jeans. No weapons on him. Three holes in his chest and stomach, and one of them was just above his heart. He hadn't died on the spot — but he was close.
She dug through his pants pocket for his ID.
"Frank Castle..."
She snapped her mouth shut.
Of course it was him. The future Punisher. The one, the only.
The Central Park shooting — that was the event that killed Frank Castle's entire family. His wife, his children, murdered in the crossfire. In the aftermath, he'd gone on a rampage against every gang connected to the incident, swearing to hunt down whoever was ultimately responsible.