He wasn't about to let Daisy play him that easily. After a quick mental calculation of what he considered a fair number, he slid a bank card across to her. "Remember — this is coming out of my own pocket. Nothing to do with S.H.I.E.L.D."
Daisy nodded quickly and took the card.
Business concluded, Fury opened his car door and drove off without another word.
She watched his silhouette disappear into the night and smirked. *His own pocket?* Right. Who was going to believe that?
S.H.I.E.L.D. had built over a hundred covert bases worldwide under the World Security Council's jurisdiction. But beyond those, Nick Fury had personally established countless safe houses of his own across the globe — only to have them seized by the government, raided by HYDRA, or blown sky-high in a string of disasters. By conservative estimates, at least thirty of them were gone.
And these weren't your average studio apartments. Missile silos. Helipads. Full training facilities. Weapons and ammunition of every variety. Blast-proof, gas-proof, proof against a dozen other things. "Safe houses" in name only — military bases in reality.
Thirty-plus secret military bases, quietly constructed. He was a salaried director. Where did all that money come from?
The answer was obvious: Nick Fury was the single greatest embezzler in the entire Marvel universe — past, present, and future. Even HYDRA, with all its resources and all its moles working in concert, couldn't match what one man had skimmed on his own. It was no wonder the World Security Council wanted him replaced. His spending had grown so astronomical it was straining the budgets of multiple member nations.
Nobody knew how many contingency plans he had stashed away. Even his most trusted lieutenants weren't fully read in. He kept his cards close to his chest with everyone.
The whole conversation had never touched on the subject of powers. Daisy could only assume the worst — that Fury knew, and had deliberately chosen not to say anything, turning it into a secret only *he* held.
She could, of course, try to silence him. But she had no confidence in the outcome. Nick Fury wasn't the second-rate operator he sometimes appeared to be on screen. As a former member of the Brotherhood of the Shield — one of the Zodiac — he had survived more ambushes, betrayals, and close calls than anyone alive. He'd have contingencies layered upon contingencies. If she tried and failed, if he managed to walk away, the fallout would haunt her for years.
There was no reason to go down that road. Taking a little of his money would keep things civil between them — at least that was how she chose to see it.
She pulled out her phone and checked her balance. Fifty thousand dollars. That would go a long way toward solving her cash flow problem.
-----
She didn't rush to the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy right away. The next day, she gathered her small team and sat down to talk strategy on rolling out their big data platform.
James Wesley had ultimately come around to her offer. A dropout teenager wouldn't have interested him — but a person with powers was a different story entirely. It tipped the scales. At his core, he was still a believer in the underworld's oldest law: strength commands respect.
That gave her a working team: James Wesley, mob consigliere turned company operator; David Lieberman, an exceptionally patient tech guy who would handle the engineering; and Ms. Matsumoto, who had come within a hair's breadth of becoming the kind of lawyer you *didn't* want to cross.
On paper it looked like a thin roster. In practice, all three had serious futures ahead of them. James would one day serve as the right hand of the man who ruled New York's underworld. David would become a former NSA analyst known as "Micro." Ms. Matsumoto would evolve into a cold-blooded assassin — Lady Bullseye herself. The potential in this room was anything but ordinary.
All Daisy had to do was channel it. Fortune 500 wasn't out of reach.
"Everyone," she said, setting the tone, "I pulled in another round of funding last night — fifty thousand dollars, no strings attached. I've already moved it into the company account." As the founder, watching the company scrape by was painful enough; parting with the money hurt even more. But it had to be done. "Our big data analytics platform has cleared the development phase. I want to hear where everyone thinks we go from here."
Ms. Matsumoto spoke first — as the closest thing they had to a trusted aide, she felt the weight of the responsibility. "We have no reputation yet. Maybe we start with small-to-mid-sized businesses? Lower revenue per contract, but we build goodwill. Referrals follow."
She had clearly been turning this over for days. And since she'd been a practicing attorney back in Japan, her framing was methodical — though a few of her English terms landed slightly off. She repeated the key points in Japanese to be sure.
Daisy had been around her enough to catch the gist. Wesley, for his part, spoke Mandarin, Japanese, English, Russian, and several other languages with professional fluency — a skill set that had helped him broker New York's black-market alliances.
He listened to Matsumoto and responded with a dismissive half-smile, in Japanese: "Why bother with small fish? If we're doing this, we go straight to the major players."
The condescension stung. There was a sharp *shing* — Ms. Matsumoto's hand had already found the knife in her bag.
Wesley startled and glanced back at Daisy.
Daisy stifled a laugh. A few days of training and the woman was already showing her edge. Maybe she wouldn't reach the heights of Lady Bullseye someday — but she certainly wasn't going to stay a wallflower.
"Easy, easy — we're all friends here," Daisy said, smoothing things over. "Maki is a very gentle person, really."
Matsumoto immediately switched modes, bowing with polished humility and apologizing to Wesley and David — who had also gone pale. The moment passed.
Daisy chewed it over. Her own instincts said go big, go fast — land a major client, create a splash, and let the orders roll in. That was how New York moved. The Japanese philosophy of earning trust slowly, building repeat business brick by brick — it wasn't *wrong*, exactly, but it wasn't the city's rhythm.
Still, reputation mattered even here. And the problem was obvious: who were they, exactly? A dropout, a mob flunky, a quiet tech guy, and a Japanese "off limits" lawyer. None of them had the kind of standing that got you past the front desk of a Fortune 500 company.
The proof was in the Marvel universe itself. When Aldrich Killian — the main villain of *Iron Man 3* — had attended Tony Stark's New Year's Eve party, Stark had stood him up. Left him on a rooftop alone all night in the cold. That was how big corporations treated people they didn't consider worth their time.
This group was arguably less impressive than Killian had been. At least he'd had a PhD, an actual scientist at a legitimate conference.
Their only real advantage was that they were all reasonably good-looking. In this day and age, that still counted for something.
She turned to Wesley. "Do you have any contacts we could leverage?"
He gave her a flat look. "If I had contacts, would I be here?"
Daisy bit back a sigh. So the current version of Wesley, before he hitched his star to Kingpin, genuinely had nothing to work with. His main value down the line came from Fisk's name — not his own network.
She'd have to find another angle.