The next morning Daisy and her maid bolted down breakfast and headed to the office early, waiting for the market to open.
Right on cue, a full night of circulation and escalation had done its work. News of the Doom Industries space station disaster and Victor Von Doom's suspected death had spread everywhere. False reports tangled with real ones, amplified by interested parties, seeping through the public like a slow leak until they became a full-scale panic.
Doom Industries stock went into freefall the moment trading opened. It dropped with no apparent floor.
A handful of major institutional investors—Daisy among them—were cashing in on a rare windfall. Smaller firms had moved too late; they were scrambling just to cut their losses. As for ordinary retail traders, well.
Within three days the social fallout had reached every corner of the country. Even Long Island's wealthy residential belt had reports of armed robbers in the area, though the area was a police priority with patrols running around the clock.
Daisy couldn't have cared less, but the household's two security staff both recommended keeping little Lorna out of school for a few days.
She thought about it and agreed on the spot. Between the cosmic radiation research and the Doom short position, she was already stretched thin—and with the streets this chaotic, the girl was better off at home.
"Miss, two of the big investors have pulled out," her maid reported that evening when Daisy returned from her swim.
"Did something come out of Doom Industries?" Daisy toweled off, which briefly sent the maid's gaze wandering.
It took a few seconds for her to recover. "Word is Victor Von Doom has been moved out of the ICU. Signs that he may regain consciousness at any time."
What a waste. But Daisy had never had a clean shot at him anyway. Better to leave Doctor Doom for Reed and his team to deal with at their leisure.
"Then we pull out too. What are we looking at for returns?"
She stripped out of her swimsuit with no self-consciousness whatsoever and walked into the bathroom.
"Close to $800 million. Do you want it transferred back, or rolled into another position? My investment advisor is recommending we stay in the financial markets—she thinks Osborn Industries has been putting up excellent numbers lately."
Daisy shot that down immediately. Norman Osborn was funding biochemical research one week and bankrolling Doctor Octopus the next. The man was a walking money pit; he just cooked his books well enough that the outside world hadn't figured it out yet.
"Keep back enough for running expenses. Put the rest into Stark Industries stock—and hold it long-term this time."
She was about eight blocks away from being a professional investor, but she had one advantage no professional could buy: she already knew how the story ended. With the Stark Industries technology campus about to open its doors, the stock—currently trading at bargain-bin prices—was due for a rebound. This was exactly the right moment to get in.
"Long-term?" Her maid sounded surprised. Two consecutive short plays, each ending with investors weeping while she quietly counted the profits—holding a position long didn't fit their established playbook at all.
"I think Stark still has room to run." Room to run was putting it mildly. Once the clean energy project launched, today's investment would return at least five times over.
Unwinding the Doom position and accumulating Stark's public float turned out to be equally straightforward.
Social unrest flared up quickly and died down just as fast. The people jumping off buildings or taking their own lives were the only ones doing that. A week later the streets went quiet again, and little Lorna had to go back to school.
"You want me to drive you?" Daisy wasn't entirely sold on the idea.
Lorna begged pitifully. "Please, just this once? Please?"
The child obviously wanted to show up in Daisy's sports car and bask in the attention. Daisy gave her a look that said I see exactly what you're doing—and still said yes. That's what you buy a sports car for, isn't it? The thing was genuinely uncomfortable for getting to work anyway.
They set out from Long Island, cutting through Queens and then Brooklyn. On the Brooklyn Bridge—the crossing from Brooklyn into Manhattan—they ran straight into gridlock.
Daisy stared at the bridge. She'd watched movies destroy this thing so many times it practically gave her a sense of impending doom just looking at it. Her Cheetah instinct was already pinging: something's happening today. Nothing catastrophic—but something.
While Daisy sat there squinting grimly at the horizon, Lorna stood up in her seat and looked around in all directions. Traffic was completely gridlocked in every direction. Without using their abilities, they weren't going anywhere quickly.
Daisy stood on her seat too. She was taller, longer-legged, with better eyesight, and she spotted the source of her unease fairly quickly: Ben Grimm, the Thing, was standing off against the NYPD.
The mutation had gone all the way. His body was covered in deep fissures, skin the color of dried clay, muscles like stacked slabs of rock. His fingers were as thick as Lorna's wrist. Each hand had only four fingers. Aside from having a head, a torso, and four limbs, he barely looked human anymore.
The Thing's face was genuinely terrifying—the kind that would give a small child nightmares for a week—but he had no intention of hurting anyone. If anything, the NYPD officers looked more frightened than he did.
Several of them were shaking badly, raising their handguns with trembling hands and shouting things like "Hands up!" and "Drop your weapon!"
Ben Grimm looked baffled. What weapon was he supposed to have?
"Daisy, what's going on?" Lorna was craning her neck with the cheerful nosiness of someone hoping for a spectacle; she hadn't been able to see anything and had finally resorted to asking.
"It's a ridiculous story. Someone who acquired a mutation tried to rescue a bystander and caused a massive traffic accident in the process."
Daisy had been methodically working to instill a functional worldview in Lorna: the heroes here were worth admiring, but a lot of their methods left a great deal to be desired.
This Thing situation was a perfect example. Saving a bystander—was that good? Of course it was. But he'd caused an enormous traffic pileup in the process. Who was liable for the property damage? Were there casualties in the collision?
Even from a quick scan of the scene, she could already count close to seventy vehicles with rear-end damage in varying degrees. The big rig he'd stopped—a semi as massive as an Optimus Prime—was a total write-off. Who was paying for that?
"A mutant?" Lorna had stopped listening to the philosophy and gone straight to her own question. "Is he a mutant?"
"Unfortunately, no. His ability was acquired, not innate—he doesn't count as a mutant. And he's literally made of rock. Not exactly easy on the eyes."
The mention of not easy on the eyes knocked Lorna's interest down by half immediately. Still, she coaxed Daisy into getting out of the car to get a closer look.
Daisy took her by the hand, and they wove through the crowd.
Then—without warning—a frequency that was nothing like anything human suddenly appeared right beside her. Her hand shot out on instinct. She caught herself an instant later and yanked the force back, but the two of them were already too close—