"You're pulling my leg. How could that possibly be true!" Viper answered without a second's thought—and then surprised even herself at how completely she'd turned around.
Just a little while ago she'd been all but ready to gather Miss Drew into her arms and cry out, "Baby, don't cry, Mommy's here." Now she didn't recognize the woman at all.
"Someone tampered with my memories? Who?"
Daisy met the question with silence. Viper's willpower was extraordinarily tenacious—she knew that firsthand. And this whole business didn't feel like the work of any "person."
She recounted everything the White Queen had said, word for word, and Viper sank into thought.
"I know you didn't use the Super-Soldier Serum, and you didn't use Newton's Infinity Formula. If you cut yourself off from your past, your immortality goes with it." There was a pointed edge to Daisy's words.
"Let me think it over…" Viper retreated to her room alone.
"Whatever kind of enemy this turns out to be, I'm willing to help you." Having so often flown Viper's banner to lend herself credibility, Daisy figured it was time she returned the favor at least once.
…
After Daisy had mooched another meal off the White Queen, Viper finally made up her mind.
"Do you know anyone who can do magic? Someone willing to help me." Viper tacked on the qualifier after the fact.
"Someone who can do magic…" The question genuinely stumped Daisy. The Ancient One and Storm both surely counted, but she had a feeling the Ancient One would casually strangle Viper on sight, and Storm would end up in a full-blown brawl with her.
So those two were out.
As for the rest—Doctor Strange was still working as a surgeon; she had no idea where Magik or Doctor Voodoo were; Dormammu's sister and niece were both in the Dark Dimension; and Doctor Doom was still down in Hell. None of them were options.
The condition of not minding which side of good or evil someone fell on screened out a great many more spellcasters.
She raked her gorgeous red hair into something resembling a bird's nest, wracking her brain, and at last one person came to her.
The future Scarlet Witch's teacher—the little-known witch Agatha Harkness, an old crone who could survive for ages as a disembodied soul even after death.
"A witch? One with real magic? Where'd you hear this—S.H.I.E.L.D. intel?" Viper sounded skeptical. The Americas were crawling with witches and witch doctors, but scarcely a one among them could actually channel magic. Over time, witch, witch doctor, and fraud had become more or less synonymous.
Daisy couldn't very well explain where her information came from, so she glossed over it. Viper assumed she had some other source and didn't press.
"If my intel's any good, this witch is a survivor of the Salem witch trials all those years ago. She's well over three hundred years old by now, and she can definitely solve your problem."
Viper was half convinced at best, but she left New York with Daisy all the same. The White Queen had no interest in any witch and saw them off as they teleported away.
Three hundred years had passed. What had once been a major sensation at the time had long since been swept onto the rubbish heap. People cared more about how much their stocks had climbed, whether their wages would be docked. Whether some witch from three centuries ago had been wrongfully condemned was the last thing on their minds.
Even with the formidable intelligence networks both Daisy and Viper commanded, the two of them spent three days searching across Massachusetts. The town of old was long gone without a trace. With HYDRA in tow, they swept through five libraries and three warehouses suspected of holding the town's old records.
Cross-referencing period documents against various geological surveys, they finally pinned down their target near a cluster of upscale apartments.
This was the site of old Salem Village—where more than twenty witches and innocents had been tortured to death in public, their corpses left to rot in the wild for fifty years.
The atrocities of the past had long been forgotten. The incident became rumor, the rumor became legend, and there was no Salem Village here anymore.
"A witch with real magic, captured by ordinary people?" Viper still harbored her doubts.
Daisy shrugged. "Maybe their astrology, their occult studies, or some other revelation told them they had to die on a particular day of a particular month of a particular year? How would I know?"
In her mind, witches were all twitchy oddballs, spending their days studying toad eggs and lizard claws and other strange things. If one of them couldn't get over something and wanted to die, that was entirely understandable.
This old crone Agatha was like that. So was the Romani mother of Doctor Doom. Even the Ancient One trended a bit that way.
This whole crowd of spellcasters belonged to the type where, if the King of Hell summons them to die at the third watch, they'd show up to report at the second—terrified of dying too slowly, of being last in line.
Both women had brought along plenty of subordinates this time. Viper had members of her Serpent Society, led by Diamondback—Rachel Leighton—yet another top-tier athlete who'd switched careers to become an assassin.
This woman was well acquainted with Crossbones, whom Daisy had brought along. The two had once trained together under Taskmaster, and now they stood beneath HYDRA's banner once again. Fate had a strange sense of humor.
As an operative, Crossbones's strike team was clearly far more professional than the Serpent Society. Working from various historical records, they quickly sketched out a map of the old town.
Several key points were marked—the police station, the square, the homes of several witches, and the place where their bodies had been left exposed.
In front of this crowd of villains, Daisy didn't hide her abilities. Under their assorted stares, she flew up into the sky to search for the witch's present-day hideaway.
Witches were homebodies by nature, rarely leaving their own turf. Following the layout of the old town, she searched bit by bit.
A warehouse that tried to muddle her vision came into view. The warehouse's magic took effect automatically a second later, trying to slide her gaze away—but Daisy's reflexes outpaced the spell. Her brain registered the signal, and the magic broke of its own accord.
"Two kilometers (1.2 miles) to the northwest." She landed and led the group to the front of the warehouse.
"What's here?" Everyone but Daisy was still affected by the magic. The auto-triggering spell scrambled their visual systems—their eyes saw it, but their brains never received the signal.
"There's some kind of blurry anomaly, I think. I can't see it very clearly." Even Viper looked to Daisy, baffled, asking what was going on.
Director Johnson was a little startled. She'd brute-forced her way through with sheer stats, but Viper hadn't. By the look of it, this lovely serpent seemed to have a touch of the very thing spellcasters prized most—mystical perception.
From a few chats with Storm, Daisy's grasp of magic was that of an outsider—she had no power of her own, but she'd watched plenty of others practice it.
Her theoretical knowledge was rich enough, though, and she knew full well that having mystical perception and lacking it were two entirely different outcomes.
When the god of black magic had chosen Viper as the bearer of his pact all those years ago, he'd likely seen her talent. It was just that Viper had spent her talent points in all the wrong places.
Now, with that talent left to wither, only a faint trace of perception remained. Viper couldn't crack the magic on the door, so she couldn't get in. And if she—the actual subject—couldn't get in, it was no use having Daisy, the mere helper, go in alone.
For the moment, a whole crowd of people stood stumped by a single magical doorway.