She sprinted back to her apartment, threw herself onto her bed, and lay there like a wrung-out dishcloth.
Outwitting a trained intelligence operative — that was something neither her past life as a struggling web novelist nor her inherited memories as a teenage hacker had ever prepared her for. In the moment, the adrenaline had been electric. Now, in its wake, she was left with a deep, trembling dread.
The exhaustion set in hard. She caught her reflection in the mirror and winced. This was a face that, under any objective standard, would easily score an eighty out of a hundred. And somehow she'd run it into the ground until it looked like a sixty.
She genuinely had no idea how to take care of herself. The previous Daisy's memories weren't much help there either.
Other transmigrators got gentle wake-up calls — a beautiful handmaiden, the sound of birdsong, the clang of morning bells. Not her. She'd been woken up by smell. Specifically, the smell coming off her own body.
The old Daisy had it rough. Orphaned out of the system at ten years old, shuffled through four consecutive foster families, each of which collected government subsidies in exchange for covering her school fees. Both sides got what they wanted and otherwise pretended the other didn't exist. Cold didn't begin to cover it.
Years of grinding poverty had left no room for luxuries. She'd saved every spare cent for years just to buy a secondhand laptop. And the parish school had a strict no-perfume policy. So the smell that woke her up? That was just her natural scent. Body chemistry, unassisted.
Fortunately it wasn't strong. Her nose had eventually adjusted.
Survival first. Everything else later.
The hardest step was done. The Obelisk was in her hands. The only person who knew anything about it — Sitwell — had already shuffled off to wait for his phantom promotion and his fantasy future.
She took a slow drink of water, steadied herself, and unzipped her bag. The Obelisk sat quietly inside, exactly as she'd left it.
Without an Inhuman bloodline, the Obelisk would petrify any sentient being who touched it. This was the moment of truth.
She was about ninety percent sure she was the real thing. But what if she was wrong? Turning into stone wasn't the plan.
She picked up a small knife and held it in her dominant hand. If the petrification started, she'd cut off the finger before it spread.
She stuffed a towel into her mouth, just in case she screamed.
I can do this. It's going to be fine. She kept telling herself that. It took ten full minutes before she finally made herself move.
Her left pinky inched toward the Obelisk. Ten centimeters (4 inches). Five (2 inches). One (~0.4 inches).
The gap between fingertip and metal closed to almost nothing.
She gritted her teeth and pressed down.
Her eyes flew wide open, staring at both the Obelisk and her own hand — no calcification. The Obelisk seemed to grow faintly warm beneath her touch. That was all.
Still not satisfied, she wrapped her entire left hand around it.
The Obelisk remained unchanged. So did she.
"I knew it!" She buried her face in her pillow to muffle the burst of excited laughter, bouncing with relief for a solid minute before she finally calmed down.
She pressed a hand to her chest and waited for her heartbeat to even out.
Bloodline confirmed. Obelisk secured. The next step was the activation ritual — and the ancient Inhumans had ruthlessly selective standards. In their view, only the genetically superior deserved powers. The stronger the gene, the stronger the ability — though superior genetics also carried the risk of greater base-gene degradation during the process.
Did Quake have a genetic flaw in the original timeline? She'd never been able to spot one. She chose to believe her own genes were simply exceptional.
In the original story, Tony Stark was still peddling his Jericho missiles to anyone who'd buy them. The scene where Quake installs the Obelisk in Puerto Rico's underground city was at least four years away. She'd accelerated her own timeline considerably.
Which meant she was alone. No team. No allies. And she wasn't doing the "fake HYDRA operative" routine again — one round with those spooks was more than enough.
She had to travel solo, Obelisk in tow, to Puerto Rico. Find the underground city. Unlock her bloodline.
Heading out alone armed with nothing but a taser? That was a bad idea.
Her face — equal parts soft and striking — didn't quite fit the local aesthetic, and her inability to dress herself wasn't helping. But drunks and racists were everywhere, and she couldn't afford to ignore that.
Puerto Rico had been arguing about becoming America's fifty-first state for decades, but the island was struggling economically, and some areas weren't safe. She needed a way to defend herself. Firearms were the obvious answer.
She counted her remaining funds. After the Sitwell operation, she was down to $900. That ruled out any immediate travel plans.
However she moved forward, she needed money. Her hacking skills were solid, but the golden era of digital heists was over. Touching a bank system was a death sentence. Fortunately, she was also a capable programmer.
A day later, she picked up a private contract — building a database input system for a small company. Days: theology class, dutifully pretending to participate. Nights: eyes burning over a keyboard, grinding out code for a job that had no future but paid actual money.
Seven days of this earned her $3,000. She went to check out the local gun shops.
Rifles, hunting guns, shotguns — all converted to semi-automatic, magazines trimmed accordingly, and easy enough to buy with valid ID. But what she actually wanted was a handgun. That required an advance application and a waiting period for approval.
Federal law allowed long guns at eighteen, while licensed dealers couldn't sell handguns to anyone under twenty-one. Daisy had just turned eighteen. She wasn't going to Puerto Rico with a rifle slung over her shoulder.
And even if she bought something here, neither a plane nor a boat would let her bring it. No spatial storage ring had come with her transmigration. She'd have to figure out weapons once she arrived.
Buying a gun was out. Learning to shoot was not. Every major gun store chain had practice ranges, and there were dedicated shooting clubs offering everything from selection to training to full proficiency — a complete service. All the customer needed was money and a functional brain.
She found a large chain store across the river in New Jersey, showed her ID, filled out the paperwork, and rented a handgun, two boxes of ammunition, two target sheets, and a lane. Handgun rental: $10. Ammo: $32. Targets: $1. Lane fee: $18. After some hesitation, she added a certified instructor at $68 per hour.
She made full use of every free hour she had. Two weeks of serious practice. And she had to admit — there was a reason Quake eventually served as S.H.I.E.L.D.'s acting director. Her body was simply better than average. Slightly stronger. Sharper eyesight. Faster reflexes. Small edges that stacked into something meaningful — and this was all before factoring in her Inhuman abilities and enhanced physiology.
Total training cost: around $300, mostly ammunition. She wouldn't call herself a sharpshooter, but she could handle herself against a civilian threat. She stopped by a small industrial facility and borrowed their X-ray scanner to check the Obelisk. True to form, it showed up as nothing — not even a shadow. Like scanning a pocket of air. She felt completely secure.
She changed into travel clothes — light-wash jeans, sneakers, a baseball cap, tinted sunglasses, and a breezy shirt with the sleeves rolled up over a tank top. She said goodbye to her roommate and told the school she was taking a month off to search for her birth parents. The office was delighted to sign off on it.
Four hours later, the plane touched down at Luis Muñoz Marín International Airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico.
She started looking for a place to stay. The island ran mostly on Spanish, but it also had English as an official language — a legacy of its political status. Daisy found a hotel that advertised itself as the safest in the area and checked in without trouble.